Alachua County Commission decides to start over on Legacy Community workforce housing development, discusses second option for new animal shelter

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the June 24 Alachua County Commission meeting, the board voted to start over on selecting a developer for the Legacy Community workforce housing development and discussed a second possible property for the new animal shelter.

History of the Legacy Community project

The Dogwood Village project was approved by the County Commission in September 2020 on a consent agenda, and the State Housing Finance Authority (HFA) approved a loan award of $460,000 in August 2021. The County Commission later voted to provide $230,000 to the HFA as a local match toward the project costs of about $25 million. The project was intended for families under 60% of adjusted median income, also known as “workforce housing.” The bulk of the funding for the project came from the Florida Housing Finance Corporation (FHFC) through housing tax credit funds. 

At a September 2022 meeting, the Commission voted unanimously to approve the funds but also voted to send a letter asking that the project be relocated to a different property in Alachua County.

At a December 2022 meeting, the board voted 3-2, with Commission Chair Anna Prizzia and Commissioner Mary Alford in dissent, to withdraw the funds. Later that month, Ability Housing said that if the board did not reverse course, the company would have “no choice but to return the award and seek damages from the County for its decision to breach its commitment”; those damages were estimated at $15 million. The board voted 3-2 on January 10, 2023 to affirm their earlier decision to withdraw the local match funding.

In May 2023, the board approved a $3 million settlement to purchase the property and “make Ability housing whole,” and in May 2024, the board approved issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the development of workforce and market-rate single-family housing on the 13-acre site, now known as the Legacy Community.

Legacy Community

Although responses to the RFP had been received and ranked, County Manager Michele Lieberman said at the June 24 meeting that the proposals did not have enough detail to be able to move forward with the negotiation, so staff recommended rejecting all the applications, refining the scope, and re-issuing the RFP. 

First motion

Commissioner Ken Cornell made a motion to approve the staff recommendation, saying he wanted to make sure the County built something that the community wants and deserves. Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler seconded the motion. 

Commissioner Mary Alford asked whether the County could provide and maintain infrastructure that is traditionally provided and maintained by homeowners’ associations, which “would help maintain that property as affordable, going into the future.”

Pointing out that she had twice voted to “put the kibosh” on workforce housing projects on the site, Wheeler said she wanted to be sure they were “crossing every ‘t’ and dotting every ‘i'” because voting against the projects had been “really stressful for me.”

Commissioner Anna Prizzia said she would support the motion although “we really expected to have proposals at this stage that would be ready to move forward.” She said she wanted to be sure that this time, the Scope of Work would take the expertise of all County departments into account. She also wanted an “autopsy” of the process to date.

Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby said he would recommend putting together an Invitation to Negotiate (ITN); he said the County could put out a more specific RFP, but if the board wants to identify qualified vendors and then negotiate the details, that would be an ITN, which is more of “an open book opportunity.”

Re-issuing would mean a delay of at least 6-9 months

Chair Chuck Chestnut asked how long the process would take, and Crosby said that depended on whether they decided to do an RFP or ITN. He said it would probably take about a year for an RFP and six to nine months for an ITN. He also said that staff could work with the top-ranked vendor from the RFP to clarify the scope if that’s what the board wanted them to do.

Prizzia said, “What I want to make sure is that whoever’s doing this project has, number one, our community values and expectations at the forefront. Number two, that they have the financial capability and wherewithal to do this project and do it well in a reasonable timeframe, that we’re not 10 years down the road, and the project’s still hanging out.” She said the board had already specified market-rate housing and that she wasn’t interested in creating a Scope of Work: “I’m not an expert in building and development… I feel like I need the experts to tell me what needs to go into that scope.”

Prizzia also disagreed with Alford about subsidizing the infrastructure because the County is already giving the land to the developer, “and I want to see what they can bring forward with what we have on the table… A subsidized, affordable housing development isn’t really what [the community is] asking for, and I want to make sure we’re not going down that path.”

Alford: “I would rather spend the time to do this right than to do this in a hurry.”

Alford said she had been hoping to get some proposals for mixed-use development, including businesses like an insurance agent, a daycare, or a barbershop. She said, “I would rather spend the time to do this right than to do this in a hurry.”

Amended motion

Cornell agreed, saying the most important thing is “buy-in” from the community, and “what the community has told me they want is, they want a single-family residential developer that has a history of building market-rate housing that the community would support and be proud of.” He said one of the submitted proposals included modular housing, and “I haven’t heard anyone say they wanted modular housing, not a one person.” He added moving forward “under an RFQ scenario” (similar to an ITN) to his motion, and Wheeler agreed.

Rodney Long: “This will be the second housing proposal rejected on this property in three years.”

Rodney Long, representing the Long Foundation, the top-rated vendor in the RFP process (the others were the Hutchinson Foundation, Longhorn Ventures Holdings LLC, and Supreme Building Group LLC), said he thought it was unfair for the board to change the rules at the end of the process: “Legally, all the respondents, they followed your procurement process, approved by this board, and they were ranked appropriately… This will be the second housing proposal rejected on this property in three years… We believe that we can negotiate terms of the development agreement with your County staff.”

A representative of the Hutchinson Foundation supported the motion to start over, which would “give us an opportunity to kind of re-bid and get in touch with the community and provide what it is that they need.”

Representatives of the other two companies were not there to provide comments.

Public comment

During public comment, Bridget Johnson said she wanted “single-family homes and some businesses, not multi-family development at all.” Another woman said she and her neighbors are “totally against modular homes, if that’s what they’re planning on bringing… We want quality neighborhoods built.” Jancie Vinson supported starting over. 

A representative from a company partnering with the Long Foundation said he thought there was a misconception: “Our homes are not modular… [They are] structurally designed homes.”

Second amended motion

After públic comment, Crosby said the board might want to consider adding “much more specific community engagement” to the RFQ or ITN. He reminded the board that “we’re only going to get back what the economy tells these developers, or these qualified people, they can afford to do.”

Cornell asked the other Commissioners whether they supported issuing an RFQ or an ITN, and Prizzia said she had gone through ITN processes “on multiple occasions at the University of Florida, and what I appreciated about the ITN experience was that we were able to negotiate with multiple firms at the same time. It gave us a chance to get the best possible product because we could talk to those multiple firms, and we could be having conversations about what’s possible.”

Cornell amended his motion to issue an ITN instead of an RFQ.

Attorney: Let staff decide on the proper vehicle for soliciting proposals

Assistant County Attorney Dave Forziano said, “It’s really a two-step process. The first is, you qualify folks, and then you still have to give them a scope… or specifications, then they submit a proposal… That doesn’t get you around the issue of having to identify at some point what it is you want and… what you are offering as a subsidy for this project.” He suggested that the board let the County Attorney’s office and staff decide on the proper vehicle for soliciting proposals. 

Cornell said it is important that the community is “supportive of the developer” and trust the developer; responding to a statement from Rodney Long that nobody showed up for a community engagement meeting, Cornell said, “Just because you give notice for the community to attend, if they don’t attend, that’s actually not on the community. I would argue that’s actually on you. You should ask yourself the question, why didn’t they come when I invited them?”

Long said that under the RFP, the developers “weren’t permitted to have a community engagement meeting… I was just doing it as an FYI… I just want to be clear for the record with that.”

Prizzia: “There has to be density enough that they can sell enough homes to make the money back that they invested in the project.”

Speaking to the audience, Prizzia said, “We’ve tried really hard to listen to what it is that you want. I think it’s really important for you to listen to the developers and the builders, because this has to be commercially viable… That means there has to be density enough that they can sell enough homes to make the money back that they invested in the project.” She reiterated that she didn’t want to subsidize the project beyond providing the land, “which is a lot of commitment already.”

Crosby said staff could bring back a recommendation in August or early September. 

The motion passed unanimously.

“Backup site” proposed for animal shelter

Lieberman next provided an update on the animal shelter and reminded the board that the County has been focused on a UF property “for an extended period of time,” but the agreement is still not finalized. However, she said, the County has had a backup site that was not discussed publicly because it “is not readily available to us at the moment – the Weseman tract on Waldo Road, which is adjacent to the Leveda Brown facility that was intended to be the fairgrounds.” She said the property has a reverter clause on it that prohibits the County from using it for anything besides a fairgrounds, and they have been working for two years to get that reverter transferred to the Equestrian Facility. She said the request has to be approved by the Governor’s Cabinet, sitting as the Internal Improvement Trust Fund, and the County had hoped it would be heard at the June meeting, but it was bumped to the September 16 meeting. 

Lieberman said the Department of Environmental Protection has been supportive of removing the reverter, but they wanted more property in the mix, so the County added a park that is surrounded by state land, and the survey of the park property is now available.

Lieberman said she didn’t want to do any site design until after the Cabinet meeting, and she had also had a recent discussion with the university, indicating that “they believe we’re very close on a lease agreement and an operational agreement.” She said the university agreed to reduce the lease price from $3 million to $1 million for the 40-year term of the lease, but some of that may be shifted into the operational agreement, so she doesn’t anticipate a full $2 million savings. 

Lieberman’s recommendation was to allow her to continue discussions with the university, and if that doesn’t result in something both sides are comfortable with by the September 16 Cabinet meeting, “then I think that’s our answer there, for sure.” She said if an agreement is available before September, the board could decide whether to proceed with the university property or wait for the Cabinet decision. She said she wanted to start work on the building in the beginning of 2026, “if at all possible.” 

Cornell: “Keep going down both paths.”

Cornell said he was in favor of allowing staff to continue discussions with UF and bring options back to the board after the September Cabinet meeting. He said there had been a lot of “shifting chairs over at UF, and I also know that Tallahassee has had a lot of shifting chairs,” and he had no problem with being flexible in the short term: “Keep going down both paths.”

Alford said she liked having “this hard deadline to sort of light a fire under UF a little bit.”

Motion

Wheeler made a motion to approve staff’s recommendation to pursue both properties, and Cornell seconded the motion with the addition that a decision must be made by September, after the Cabinet meeting. 

Prizzia agreed but said she would like staff to explore other sites because even if both fall through, “we still have to build a shelter… and soon… I know we’ve done a search; I just want to give staff the opportunity to do another search or look at other options that maybe have popped up since then.”

Wheeler: “I mean, if we’re having the state and also the federal influence, now, at the University of Florida, that makes me really nervous.”

Wheeler said UF is “a moving target, too, at this point… I mean, if we’re having the state and also the federal influence, now, at the University of Florida, that makes me really nervous… If we have the federal government engaged in how we select our president at the University of Florida – which, he’s already been engaged, and just, it makes me a little bit nervous… When I talk to the Chair [of the UF Board of Trustees], it sounded like he could take or leave it.”

Alford said, “That’s not what he said to me,” and Cornell also said, “That’s not what he said to me.”

Wheeler said maybe it was because she wasn’t excited about having the shelter on university property: “So that’s probably why he was responding to me that way: ‘Well, if you’ve got a better offer, you know, then take it.'”

Nobody from the public spoke to the motion, and it passed unanimously.

Amended tree code passes unanimously

Alachua County’s Comprehensive Plan amendment with extensive changes to the tree code came back from the State without any comments, so the board adopted it unanimously with no discussion. The details of the changes can be found here.