UF, COMMUNITY COLLABORATES ON PLANNING DEVELOPMENT
Since early 2016, the University of Florida has been asking both the UF community and the Greater Gainesville community for help envisioning long-term development – both of the campuses and the areas around it.
This strategic development planning is bringing in a bountiful harvest of “big ideas” that have garnered buy-in from key academic and civic stakeholders.
Those ideas include the following:
• Focusing new construction on the eastern third of the UF campus
• Working with community leaders and developers to create a vibrant urban village between campus and downtown
• Creating a permanent joint planning process that will include the Gainesville City Government, Alachua County Government and regional planners
The underlying principle tying these ideas together is that becoming a “Great American City” – one reminiscent of traditional college towns – requires dense development that facilitates serendipitous “collisions.”
The planning process is generating buy-in that can foster UF’s goal, said Charlie Lane, UF’s senior vice president and chief operating officer. “We need not just a plan; we need a vision,” he said.
Implementing that plan takes more than UF. “Everyone has to invest in whatever we do,” Lane said.
Putting sports rivalries aside, UF flew in leaders from the University of Georgia, Ohio State University and the University of North Carolina to a symposium held at Emerson Alumni Hall on August 31. The team also included representatives from Yale, the University of Virginia and Ohio University – as well as expert Eime Toban from Japan.
This group affirmed that UF and Gainesville are on the right track, having increasingly collaborated on improvements in the city’s core for the last two decades.
The schools represented have worked with the community and developers on innovations – such as creating faculty and staff housing near campus and making historic retail and dining areas near campus more pedestrian-friendly.
Cars and Pedestrian Competition While collisions of minds are good, collisions between vehicles aren’t, participants in the symposium agreed. But remedies such as reducing travel lanes are a tough sell because the automobile is the main way to travel to campus.
“You ignore this conflict at your own peril,” said former City Commissioner Randy Wells.
Increasing both student and faculty/ staff housing within walking distance of campus will have some benefit, members of the group said.
One approach to increasing walkability that’s gaining interest is to close traffic on SW Second Avenue between campus and Southwest Sixth Street – turning the roadway into a vibrant linear park, Lane said.
Planners are focusing on SW Fourth Avenue becoming the main street linking campus and downtown. Fourth Avenue passes through Innovation Square, an area that the city, the university and private companies are working to redevelop.
Georgia’s Daniel Sniff had another suggestion for increasing livability around campus: growing community gardens on vacant lots.
The vision also needs to extend to the Porters Neighborhood, located south of downtown and west of Main Street, said Mayor Lauren Poe during an earlier planning session, which was held at the GRU headquarters.
The small group that he was a part of recommended opening up streets that now separate the Porters neighborhood from the rest of the area.
“We want to find ways to make everyone feel part of the community,” Poe said.
The desire for inclusiveness should include guarding against gentrification, noted neighborhood leaders attending an earlier planning session at Emerson Hall.
Melanie Barr of the Duckpond Neighborhood Association, said she thought that tearing down older buildings along University Avenue to build upscale multi-story housing was troubling. “Don’t take away our character,” she said. “Don’t take away our historic charm.”
Another point participants made: keep a “funky” neighborhood that’s reflective of Gainesville’s alternative culture.
“Re-Centering” Greater Gainesville Increasing the vibrancy of Gainesville’s core will, to an extent, change the trend that began with building I-75 – which fostered new development moving west, said Greg Janks from consultant DumontJanks.
“How we can find a balance between east and west has been a big driver in our discussions,” he said.
Robust development between campus and downtown will embrace the benefits of density that have been demonstrated through the redevelopment of areas adjoining campuses nationwide – creating “new American cities,” he said.
“With strong neighborhoods near campus, we could bring in more faculty and staff,” he said.
Bridging town and gown also can be helped by student involvement, said former City Commissioner Yvonne Hinson-Rawls, who noted that when she attended UF students were required to take a community service course.
Increasing UF’s involvement in the community can help address Gainesville’s divide in opportunities, she said. “You can’t have a preeminent university in a city that has such a disparity in human potential,” she said.
The goal of UF President Kent Fuchs is to break new ground that goes beyond what universities have done, Janks said. “The president said he would love to do things that other people want to emulate,” he noted.
While visioning is essential, so is being adaptable as new national firms and research laboratories or other opportunities emerge, Lane said. “We need to stay nimble and be flexible” in adjusting when new opportunities arise, he said.
The planning process revealed that one of the area’s greatest strengths is its natural resources. “Gainesville is unique in that the outdoor places are almost the same as people’s favorite places to go,” Janks said.
Having formal mechanisms for joint city-county-university has been important to the universities represented at the symposium. Those mechanisms have included holding joint meetings each quarter and having university representatives serve as nonvoting members of local planning boards.
“Having everybody being heard is part of our DNA,” said Virginia’s Alice Raucher.
Mayor Poe said that the work he did in a small group at the planning session was encouraging. “We started out talking about what’s wrong, and we ended up talking about how to make it right,” he said.
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. The University of Florida’s work on its strategic development plan is the largest outreach effort by UF in its history. This effort has engaged two major groups of stakeholders – an 18-member group from the university and a 10-member group from the Gainesville community. UF also is using a group of consultants with broad experience in such efforts. They include Elkus Manfredi Architects, DumontJanks, Landwise Advisors and VHB. In addition, UF has conducted an online mapping exercise to gauge how people travel to campus and what are their favorite spots in Greater Gainesville. To become involved, go to https://uf.dumontjanks.com/ or contact Director of Planning Linda Dixon at [email protected].