In 1950, when the Merchant Marine training base at Bayboro Harbor was deactivated, Nelson Poynter started a campaign to persuade the City of St. Petersburg to donate the land to the state. Poynter committed himself to donate $500,000 to help buy additional land for expansion and was the principal contributor and fundraiser for the first St. Petersburg campus library. On June 15, 1978, Nelson Poynter, his wife Marion, business and civic leaders, educators, and students took turns with eight gold-painted shovels to break ground for the first phase expansion of the campus. A few hours later, Nelson Poynter suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Poynter died that same evening. That library would become Bayboro Hall, the Nelson Poynter Memorial Library would open in 1996 in his name.