Brian Feldman is a big Gator fan, with both a University of Florida bachelor’s degree and a law degree, and he attends a couple football games each year.
“Gainesville is my favorite city, so I was stunned that I had no idea that Innovation Square existed,” he said. “I don’t remember any outreach from the university asking alumni to help.”
It’s been five years since UF announced Innovation Square as a game-changer for Gainesville, but officials recognize that they need to do better at telling its story. They’re intent on bringing Innovation Square out of obscurity — touting the opportunity for businesses, including Fortune 500 companies, to build on shovel-ready land located between the UF campus and downtown Gainesville. The university is reaching out to the Gator Nation.
“There are a lot of people on campus and among our stakeholders who don’t know a whole lot about Innovation Square, and we want to change that,” said Lee Nelson, UF’s director of real estate.
UF is tapping outside expertise in spreading the word. It’s hired JLL, an international real estate company, to help attract major players to Innovation Square and also hired Gainesville-based Front Street Commercial Real Estate Group to lease existing UF-owned buildings in the square. Parisleaf, a local branding and digital company, is redeveloping the Innovation Square story.
Competition is fierce among university towns touting available land that is next door to academic and research centers, said Parisleaf Creative Director Patrick Sanders.
“We’re working on communicating that Gainesville is more than UF,” he said. “It has roots that create its flavor and culture. It’s a healthy place to live with an affordable cost of doing business.” Selling the charms of Greater Gainesville is, indeed, crucial to attracting out-of- town talent, said Dave Stanton, the manager of the Gainesville office of Mobiquity, a mobile app and business strategy developer that moved to Innovation Square. Mobiquity tasked The Agency, a marketing organization affiliated with UF’s College of Journalism and Communications, with making an employee recruiting video. The first draft focused on Mobiquity. Stanton sent The Agency back to the drawing board.
“I wanted to feature the springs, the Gainesville-Hawthorne Trail and Satchels Pizza — to let people know Gainesville is a really good place and they will enjoy living here,” said Stanton. Mobiquity’s move to Gainesville is an example of the success of Innovation Square. The Boston-based company announced in 2013 that it planned to create a Gainesville development center. Capturing Mobiquity is a success story for the efforts of UF and the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce to attract outside companies to Innovation Square. Another example is Mindtree, an e-commerce firm that moved to the Ayers Technology Plaza at 720 SW 2nd Avenue in 2012. Ayers is the former medical arts building associated with the former Alachua General Hospital.
Meanwhile, local company Fracture is a homegrown Innovation Square success. Alex Theodore and Abhi Lokesh were UF students when they founded the company, which prints pictures on glass, in 2009. It has grown to 35 employees since then. The company moved into a plain Trimark property in Innovation Square, located at 112 SW 6th Street in 2011.
“The outside didn’t match the cool stuff that was going on inside,” Lokesh said.
Trimark then gave the building a new façade. “Trimark has done a good job of sprucing up the area to create a modern look,” Lokesh said.
Innovation Square’s growing sense of place helps Fracture recruit employees with specialized skills from across the country, he added.
“People like seeing that we’re a stone’s throw from most of the other startups in town,” he added. While Lokesh is glad to see more UF students staying in town, he realizes that most don’t. “We have a long way to go in terms of Innovation Square retaining grads,” he said.
The Fracture founders are doing their part to build the local economy as members of committees of the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce. Lokesh serves on the Talent Alignment and Workforce Development Committee and Theodore is on the Advanced Manufacturing Council.
“We’re doing our part to showcase Gainesville and help it be more successful,” Lokesh said.
Public and Private Players
Mindtree has expanded steadily, and it now occupies 25,000 square feet in the Ayers building. It is the largest employer to arrive since former UF President Bernie Machen announced plans for Innovation Square five years ago, calling it “a 24/7 live/work/play urban research park environment.”
UF has also been successful with the Innovation Hub, a business incubator located south of the Ayers Plaza. An expansion of the Hub is planned, which will double the size of the current three-story 48,000-square-foot building. The university partnered with Jacksonville-based Signet Enterprises in developing Infinity Hall, a UF residence hall oriented toward students interested in entrepreneurship that is near to Ayers.
Innovation Square is actually two separate projects. One, owned by the UF Development Corporation, has prepared the former Shands/AGH site for development. This project includes renovation the Ayers building, including making lobbies and public areas more appealing to tech companies.
The second Innovation Square project is the private development in the blocks around the Development Corporation’s property.
Trimark Properties, the primary developer of the private property, has renovated many of the properties, many of which used to be medical offices, to give them a modern look. It has completed work on 11 buildings totaling 44,000 square feet. Trimark is completing construction of Nimbus, a 15,000-squarefoot building at 550 SW 2nd Avenue that will house SharpSpring, a growing marketing automation firm.
Parisleaf, the company branding Innovation Square, occupies a two-story building at 107 SW 7th Avenue.
“Trimark worked with us to customize the building based on our inspiration,” Parisleaf Co-founder Chad Paris said.
Being in Innovation Square has been good for business and picked up several nearby clients, Paris added.
“It’s provided us with legitimacy, and we’ve really taken off,” he explained.
Taking the Long View
Nelson, the UF real estate director, notes that two of the models for Innovation Square took time to fill out. Those models are Kendall Square, adjacent to the MIT campus Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Tech Square, near the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta. Both are thriving “live, work, and play” communities that have attracted major companies such as AT&T, Panasonic, Google, and Johnson and Johnson while being the home of parks, stores and housing.
“Work on revitalizing Kendall Square, which was a former industrial area that had become rundown, began in the ‘80s, and Tech Square has been developing over more than 20 years,” Nelson said. “Projects such as Innovation Square have a gestation period that is in decades, not years. However, our goal is to compress that time frame as much as possible.”
Synergy Across Midtown The area near Innovation Square is transforming, with a 109-unit apartment building planned in the 800-block of West University Avenue and a new three-story downtown campus for Santa Fe College in the works. The Benoit Group of Atlanta is planning Inception at Innovation Square, an apartment complex geared toward professionals interested in living close to work in the area. Santa Fe College’s planned building will replace the building that now houses its Center for Innovation and Economic Development business incubator, located in the 500-block of West University Avenue. The building will house CIED as well as Santa Fe’s academic programs in IT and business, said Dug Jones, Santa Fe’s associate vice president for economic development. The Florida Legislature appropriated planning money for the project in the 2016 session, Jones said. Meanwhile, CareerSource North Central Florida has moved into an existing strip shopping center facing Northwest 6th Street at University Avenue, which has been named Opportunity Square. “There’s talk of calling this entire area Opportunity Place, based on it providing places for people to progress — from obtaining career resources to becoming entrepreneurs,” Jones said. “It’s exciting to see connections that enhance the vibrant innovation community building between downtown and the UF campus.”
Senior Writer CHRIS EVERSOLE has been a keen observer of business, government and culture in the Greater Gainesville Area while living here over the past two decades. His experience includes work with the University of Florida and Alachua County Government. He also has been a journalist and public relations professional in the Tampa Bay and Sarasota- Bradenton areas, as well as in Michigan, Ohio and New York.