Alachua County and City of Gainesville Commissions discuss east side economic development, new Medieval Faire site, and food projects

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At a June 8 joint meeting, the Alachua County Commission and Gainesville City Commission heard a Sister Cities presentation, discussed east side economic development, approved moving the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire to the Gainesville Raceway, and discussed various projects related to food access.

Alachua County Commission Chair Ken Cornell led off by asking to remove an item on the state property tax initiative from the agenda, saying, “I know the City is talking about that on Thursday. We’re actually talking about that on Tuesday. So I would ask that we strike that item.” Both commissions agreed.

Sister Cities

The first item was a Sister Cities update from former Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe, who runs the Greater Gainesville International Center, and Mayor Oleksandr Kodola from Nizhyn, Ukraine.

After Mayor Kodola spoke for about half an hour, Commissioners moved to the next agenda item, an update on economic development efforts in southeast Gainesville.

UF Health Eastside Urgent Care Center

Melanie Blackburn, Director of Community Health and Family Medicine at the UF College of Medicine, provided an update on the UF Health Eastside Urgent Care Center and said UF Health has added primary care at that facility. She said they are considering extending the urgent care hours to 8 a.m. (it now opens at 10 a.m.) since staff is already there to support the primary care side; however, she said the challenge has been physician staffing. She also said they were surprised at the payment sources for patients, with 33% having Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance, another 18% with other commercial insurance, 41% using either Medicare or Medicaid, and only 10% using self-pay.

Blackburn also said they are trying to connect patients with primary care providers and expand preventive screening initiatives, and they are in the process of implementing walk-in laboratory services. 

County Commissioner Anna Prizzia expressed a desire to share data with UF Health so the County can help refer residents to community nonprofits and private organizations that provide services, “especially as we see cuts at the federal level, and now potentially at the state level, in terms of services for healthcare.” She also thanked UF Health for referring patients to the Food is Medicine program and added, “I think figuring out how we can bill for them is the next step, so that we can actually afford the food, because if we can actually find ways to bill for those support services, that food, that healthcare, the dietitians that are out in the community providing that support, the more we’ll be able to continue that process going.”

City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut asked whether UF Health is providing preventive health education classes for residents in the area, and Blackburn said they have breastfeeding and smoking cessation courses, but “there is certainly opportunity to expand, in terms of just general preventive health education for the community.”

Cornerstone campus at EHEDI

Gainesville Community Reinvestment Area (GCRA) Director Rick Smith said the Cornerstone campus at EHEDI (Eastside Health and Economic Development Initiative) hosts about seven food trucks every Thursday, bringing 30 to 35 people to the campus; the GCRA is also assessing the viability of a future Cornerstone Market to support local entrepreneurs. The GTEC renovations are beginning this week, with the goal of attracting small and home-based businesses to rent offices in that building. 

Gainesville’s Interim Chief Operating Officer Brian Singleton said the Eastside RTS station is entering the procurement phase and is expected to cost about $4.2 million, funded by federal grants. Wild Springs Public Places funds are being used to design and build the SE 8th Avenue Trail and renovate the Boulware Springs building to convert it into a public meeting space and build new trailhead restrooms, along with other improvements to the site. The City is also renovating TB McPherson ($3.5 million).

Heartwood

Gainesville Senior Housing Strategist Corey Harris said the City is negotiating with Bright Community Trust to implement a Community Land Trust to finish off the last 16 lots in Heartwood; four homes will be affordable at 80% AMI (area median income), and 12 homes will be at 120% AMI. 

Grocery stores

Harris also reviewed the history of grocery stores in East Gainesville, including the opening of the Walmart in 2008. In 2021, Bravo Supermarket provided an unsolicited proposal to open a store at the former Food Lion site, but that eventually fell through. Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward emphasized that the Food Lion site isn’t owned by the City, “so there’s only so much the City or the County can make happen there.”

Harris said the City has reached out to other grocers, but there has not been any interest. He mentioned the Farm Stop model, which County Commissioner Anna Prizzia has been championing, and Prizzia said she appreciated the City “kind of taking up the charge to actually do that research and look at that model, because I think it fills the gap between the big box stores [that can sell packaged foods and other items more cheaply than a local grocery store] but maintains the opportunity for access to fresh, nutritious foods and supports the local food economy by providing a space for farmers to consign their products… It’s sort of a hybrid between a grocery store and a… local food market that you might see on the side of the road… It’s sort of a shared risk model where you don’t have a lot of major investment.” She said the costs include capital investment up front and staffing costs.

Harris said there would be $5 million in funding available by FY29 to help support initiatives at Cornerstone, “and then we’re going to determine the market viability of [a Farm Stop].”

Ward said that because some people needed to leave, he wanted to consider the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire agenda item before coming back to the County’s part of the southeast Gainesville presentation, and Prizzia said, “This is what happens every time we start to talk about the grocery and local food systems: we push it to the end of the meeting, when everybody leaves.”

Cynthia Chestnut said, “The community appreciates the community meeting room at the East Side Clinic,” and she said the community meeting room at the Eastside RTS station will also be “very much appreciated.”

Cornell said the Medieval Faire discussion would take 10 minutes, so he agreed to insert it. Ward said, “I do apologize for the length of the agenda; there’s just a lot of really good things going on in southeast Gainesville, and I think it’s important that we share.”

Hoggetowne Medieval Faire

Leslie Ladendorf, Assistant Director for Gainesville’s Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs Department, said the Faire is celebrating its 40th year; before COVID, it was at the Alachua County Fairgrounds for 30 years, it went virtual for one year, and then it was at the old YMCA Sports Complex on Archer Road for two years before moving to Depot Park for the past three years. The event was limited to one weekend at Depot Park, but it was free. 

After extensive consideration of available sites, City staff reached out to Gainesville Raceway, and a proposal has been received from the Raceway, allowing the Faire to use the back portion of the property (not the drag strip) for $80,000 for two weekends. The venue will provide ample parking and a ticketed entrance. Ladendorf said the costs will increase from about $120,000 to $592,427, with projected revenue of $510,643, not including the contributions from the City and County (Gainesville has $130k in their FY27 budget for the Faire; the County’s Tourism department contributes $10,000 plus marketing efforts). The City is currently considering charging $25 for a ticket, with half-price tickets on Family Friday.

Commissioner Mary Alford asked about a shuttle for “transportation-limited individuals” to get out to the Raceway, and Ladendorf said, “We haven’t had those conversations.” She added that they’re trying to “keep everything conservative” in the first year.

Ward said the intent is to “get back to an event that pays for itself, because the truth is, we have been spending from reserves to make the event happen downtown… I think this is a great opportunity to not only bring the event back to its former glory and beyond and make it sustainable economically, but to also build a better relationship with Gainesville Raceway. I’ve had conversations with them. They would like to host more events out there than just being known as Gatornationals. Gatornationals is a big deal, and we’re very pleased to have it in the community, but there’s more that can happen at Gainesville Raceway, and this is sort of an opportunity to prove what’s possible there.”

Motion

City Commissioner Casey Willits made a motion to direct City staff to continue their work and to produce a two-week Hoggetowne Medieval Faire at Gainesville Raceway. Cynthia Chestnut seconded the motion, and it passed 5-0, with Commissioners Desmon Duncan-Walker and Bryan Eastman absent.

Farm Stop model

Alachua County Agricultural Economic Development Coordinator Bailey McClellan provided an update on the County’s food hub feasibility study, which is now in the pilot project phase. She said that she and a City staff member had attended a three-day Farm Stop training led by a farmer-driven local food marketplace in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

In the Farm Stop model, farmers retain ownership of their product, set their own prices, and split the revenue 70/30 with the market. The market’s 30% of sales is used to maintain the store’s infrastructure and pay for staffing, merchandising, marketing, refrigeration, food storage, and point-of-sale systems. The original Farm Stop also has a coffee shop with baked goods and light food service to “really pad their margins and drive customer traffic throughout the day.”

McClellan said location is critical for the success of this model, and the model Farm Stops are in dense residential neighborhoods near transportation routes.

Food hub pilot project 

The food hub pilot is focused on understanding the infrastructure, logistics, and market connections to support local food movement at scale; a food hub provides coordinated services for local food aggregation, sales, distribution, and marketing to connect small and mid-sized farms to larger markets. The local study is focused on institutional markets such as detention facilities, hospitals, and schools. 

McClellan said the stakeholders said they wanted the food hub to include services beyond the basic services described above, such as business support services, food processing, and commercial kitchen infrastructure. 

Frog Song Farms in Hawthorne was selected for the pilot project, and the project is focused on expanding the participation of farmers in Frog Song’s aggregation and distribution efforts and increasing institutional purchases of locally grown food. McClellan said Frog Song has onboarded five new Alachua County farms and has an onsite commercial kitchen, where a hot sauce producer is developing and packing a hot sauce that will be distributed by Frog Song. 

When the 10-month pilot project is complete, the consultants will recommend a food hub model design tailored to Alachua County, along with facility concepts, site considerations, a business plan, and an operating structure.

Prizzia said, “I think what we are building at Cornerstone, with the bus depot and the entrepreneurship center and the East Side Clinic and community spaces, is an ideal location for something like this on a major corridor, and it allows us the opportunity to potentially either co-locate a hub, or with the hub already operating and rocking and rolling, and just expanding to have a sort of spoke-and-hub model where the hub would be operating the aggregation and distribution, but there would be this retail component that could help to bring the food to one place, save farmers time and energy, and still have that consignment model available.” 

Prizzia said she wanted to make a motion to ask County staff to continue exploring the Farm Stop model with the GCRA staff “and the possibility of what that $5 million in investment could do for our food hub and a retail Farm Stop model — not to spend it, but to just keep exploring that idea… As we wrap up this food hub pilot, we’re going to need next steps for the County, and how does it tie into the work that we’re doing with the CRA to increase food access?”

Prizzia added that while there is a mobile food truck working with the Food is Medicine program, which delivers fresh food “to those in need, those things are highly, highly subsidized in almost every instance, with grant funds and local government funds in the long term, because the cost of the driver and the gas and the insurance and all those things are just so high,… it’s hard to ever meet the needs of running that infrastructure.” She says these “mobile markets” popped up when USDA was funding them, “and then once the USDA funding dried up, they all just kind of fizzled.” She said she believes the Farm Stop model has “economic stability… It’s relying on local government for the underlying infrastructure, and possibly the capital, the building infrastructure, but not on the operations and maintenance. It covers its costs.”

Motion

Cornell asked her to restate her motion because she had said so much, and Prizzia said, “No, that was not the motion. The motion was to ask [County] staff to move forward with the Farm Stop model and work with the City staff on how to leverage the $5 million in investment that the CRA has for local food.” Alford seconded the motion, which Cornell clarified was “actually to continue the research and then to continue working with the CRA staff to explore this possibility.”

Willits questioned the $5 million figure, and Prizzia said, “It was $3 million when we started.” Singleton said they “started at $3 million; as we went further into… identifying the remaining dollars we have through the end of the term of the [GCRA] agreement [between the City and the County], we’ve identified up to $5 million.” He said, however, that the City and County Commissions can reallocate those funds as they see fit, because there are “numerous” projects in the CRA that aren’t fully funded.

The County Commission voted 4-0 for Prizzia’s motion, with Commissioner Charles Chestnut absent.

Public comment and Commission Comment

During general public comment at the end of the meeting, Nancy Deren thanked the Commissions for their work on food access, which she said is “really, really critical.” She also suggested reviving the idea of local investing “and looking at how… our money can stay here.”

City Commissioner Casey Willits: “We’re literally trying to feed people. What do you mean it’s waste? We’re literally building health clinics in places that don’t have enough access to health clinics. We’re building transportation, and you know, they just get to say, ‘Oh, surely there’s all this waste.'”

During Commission Comment, Willits said the GCRA funds come from ad valorem taxes, “and in the end, it’s an example of what some people in Tallahassee may call waste, and we’re sitting here, like, we’re literally trying to feed people. What do you mean it’s waste? We’re literally building health clinics in places that don’t have enough access to health clinics. We’re building transportation, and you know, they just get to say, ‘Oh, surely there’s all this waste.'”

Willits continued, “I know, because we see our budget, and I’ve seen the County’s budget, that we try really hard to do a lot. Some people say they don’t support some of the extra stuff, but for every one of those people, there are people in the city and in the county who say, ‘I like Gainesville, I like Alachua County, because you go the extra dollar.’ To Ms. Deren’s point, for them that is their investment; they put their tax money and they invest because they know we’re going to try to build community and to build local, you know, success and wealth of all of our residents.”

Ward responded that Commissioners should still be able to spend GCRA funds on GCRA projects if the property tax amendment passes, “but we can always beat it, too. Just a thought.”