City and County Commissioners discuss future of GCRA, east side development

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At a joint meeting between the Gainesville City Commission and the Alachua County Commission on March 9, commissioners heard an update on the Gainesville Community Reinvestment Area (GCRA) and discussed the future of jointly-funded projects on the east side of Gainesville.

Commissioners were over five and a half hours into the meeting when they reached the GCRA agenda item, and both Mayor Harvey Ward and County Commissioner Chair Ken Cornell said they hoped the item would be quick.

Click here for our article on the Literacy Action Plan discussion at the March 9 joint meeting.

GTEC Center renovation

After a staff presentation that included plans for a food truck commissary at the GTEC Center, County Commissioner Anna Prizzia said, “I think that there’s a real opportunity there. It’s not on the backside of something… You know, we need grocery in East Gainesville. We need food access in East Gainesville. We need healthy food options in East Gainesville, and we want business in East Gainesville. And I think we could make Cornerstone a place that is a destination for food, rather than an afterthought for food, which is what it is now, not because of you all, but just because that’s the way that economic development and redlining has happened in our community. And it doesn’t have to be that way.”

Prizzia concluded, “I think there’s a lot that’s already been built, and a lot of people that care deeply about this that are willing to lean in, including myself, and help that idea. I would encourage you to think about taking the proof of concept that’s already built and ready to go,… because it’s offered on a plate with no strings attached, other than you’d have to build it from working food, because they’re looking for someone to pick it up and run with it. And there’s lots and lots and lots of entrepreneurs who need it.”

Cornell said, “This needs to be, probably, a much longer conversation. While you all were having this conversation at the City about the GTEC Center refresh, we [at the County] were simultaneously having a conversation about local food systems. And the reality is that the GTEC refresh, the Legacy Project, Heartwood, SE 15th Street, these were all on our agenda for today, and the School Board situation kind of overtook that.”

Referring to the $5 million allocated by the City Commission on February 25 to renovate GTEC, Cornell said, “This is a big number. It’s $5 million, and it raises our eyebrows to — is that the highest and best use? And is it in line with what the County is trying to do with food systems? At 6:49 p.m. is not the time for us to talk about it, …but I just wanted to say that I apologize to my colleagues and to all y’all, because we did intend to have a more robust discussion.”

City Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker said, “I actually really like the idea of considering the food incubator in what we can do at GTEC… I’d like to be very intentional, because when we’re looking at resolving the issues in terms of access to food, to me, it makes sense that it becomes a part of the plan whenever we’re doing something in that area, that we consider that.”

Downtown Ambassadors

City Commissioner Casey Willits said, “At some point, I want to start a conversation about Downtown Ambassadors, what the County Commission thinks about the GCRA dollars in it. We’re on a three-year contract, it’s a million dollars per year. I want to look at a future where we bring it in-house [and] we do those services with City employees.”

Changing the oversight structure for GCRA

Nearly an hour into the GCRA discussion, City Commissioner Bryan Eastman said, “Tonight is not the night to work through all this, to add something new into it, but I would like to, potentially, at the next meeting, have a conversation about, you know, what does the oversight structure look like? Are there ways to get more feedback from the County… about all this?” 

Prizzia responded, “I love the idea of a better structure for this, because I feel like every time we start to talk about the GCRA programs, there’s lots of ideas, there’s lots of questions, and it always feels like [we’re told] we have 15 minutes, and then we’ve got to move on.” She said that when she objects, the City Commissioners say, “Well, we talked about this at length at our last meeting.” She said, “Well, that’s great for you, but we’re half the funding, and we didn’t get to talk about it for two and a half hours – but we want to talk about it for two and a half hours, apparently.”

Willits responded, “Who from your staff came to our City Commission meeting where we had a two-hour conversation on GCRA, largely about GTEC? It’s your dollars; who did you send? I mean, it’s public, man — because if your staff can come to the meeting,… they can take some of that back [to you].”

Money for “disinvested schools”

Duncan-Walker said, “I want to drop a little seed in the hearts and minds of everybody today, because we’ve had a very rich, robust conversation around schools and how we move our communities forward with them at the core, and in the spirit of what we’re talking about right now with GCRA, it’s my understanding that Community Reinvestment Act funds can generally be used for disinvested schools… I’ll just drop that right there as I walk out.”

Mayor Ward: “We don’t know what the playing field is going to be like, come 2029, we just don’t.”

Ward said, “Frankly, I think it’s too early to talk about exactly what the next version of the CRA looks like… We don’t know what the playing field is going to be like, come 2029, we just don’t. We have some ideas,… but we’re going to know a lot more in November of this year. Let me say that what happens with the people that we send to Tallahassee, as a state, is going to make some changes in the way that we think about how we do things like this, and that’s a reality.”

Ward argued that they should wait until the 8th and Waldo project is farther along before deciding on the next steps: “The current iteration [of the GCRA] has produced results, and is in the process of producing results, like our community has never seen in its entire history. And we need to experience that before we go saying, yeah, that worked; no, that didn’t work here; here’s where we’re gonna do it differently… I think y’all are gonna be pleased with the results that are starting to come out of the ground now at 8th and Waldo. We’ve done a bunch of demolition over there. We’re about to build a fire station with separate funds.”

Ward: “It’s got to be all of us working together, or we’ll get what we’ve got, which is pretty okay. We can do better than pretty okay. We can be amazing.”

Ward concluded, “I don’t want to spend a lot of time studying economic development. We’ve got to actually get some stuff done,… rather than studying again and again and again… East Gainesville deserves it. The entire community deserves it, and that’s why we’ve been having some offline discussions as kind of a reinterpreted Friendship Seven…  I’ll promise you that the assets we have in this community, if we work together with all the anchor institutions, blow away every other mid-sized city that I’m aware of. But we have to be willing to use them, all together. We have to be willing to leverage them, all together. And it can’t just be the City and County. Can’t just be the City and UF, can’t be the City and School Board. It’s got to be all of us working together, or we’ll get what we’ve got, which is pretty okay. We can do better than pretty okay. We can be amazing.”

City Commissioner Bryan Eastman: “We are actually, for the first time, seeing the investment that I heard a lot of people complain that the City had not done historically, and they will see that come to fruition at some point.”

Eastman said, “We had a conversation previously about schools, and we saw people moving further and further west and people leaving East Gainesville. And I think that the criticism that there has not been enough investment in East Gainesville… — I mean, schools are infrastructure just like water pipes are, just like sewage is, just like roads are… What we have here [are] two bodies putting their General Fund dollars into targeted capital improvement and project investment. We are actually, for the first time, seeing the investment that I heard a lot of people complain that the City had not done historically, and they will see that come to fruition at some point.”

Eastman: “If the legislature wants to gut local governments in the meantime, then, you know, we’re going to be having a lot of conversations about a whole lot of things that are far bigger than the GCRA… It’s an apocalyptic outcome that goes far beyond the GCRA.“

Eastman said it’s reasonable to discuss “what it looks like to continue to invest in East Gainesville and downtown,” and he thought the County should have more of a voice in the process. He added, “I think, if the legislature wants to gut local governments in the meantime, then, you know, we’re going to be having a lot of conversations about a whole lot of things that are far bigger than the GCRA or everything else… It’s an apocalyptic outcome that goes far beyond the GCRA, but that still means that we have to plan for the future.”

Cornell concluded the meeting by saying, “On November 3, we’re going to know whatever the ballot referendum says about [property taxes],… and so I want to continue having these discussions. But as far as formal decisions about the structure, we have to get through that election… We’re talking months here; we’re not talking years and years. So we need to, I think, all get past November 3.”