Gainesville City Commission votes to keep looking for alternate sites and funding sources for Hoggetowne Medieval Faire; event will be at Depot Park in 2026

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the April 10 General Policy Committee meeting, the Gainesville City Commission voted to ask staff to keep looking for a permanent site for the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire; the event will again be held at Depot Park in 2026, which will cost about $130,000, and Commissioners also asked staff to recommend funding sources.

Event requires at least 47.5 acres within 4 miles of the city limits

Sunshine Andrei, who is the City’s Assistant Manager for Cultural Affairs, provided an overview of the challenges involved in finding a site for the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire. She said the event was originally held at the Thomas Center for four years and then moved to the Alachua County Fairgrounds; after the fairgrounds property was sold, the event moved to a private property off of Archer Road, and it’s been held at Depot Park for the past two years. 

As part of the move to Depot Park, the event was reduced to one weekend (from a peak of three weekends in 2020, just before COVID), the merchant marketplace was reduced, and the entertainment stages were scaled back, including the loss of the jousting event. Andrei said that returning to an event of the size previously held at the fairgrounds would require at least 47.5 acres; allowing the event to grow would require 60 to 80 acres. That space includes 10 to 12 acres for the event itself, 10 acres for participant parking and camping, and 30 to 40 acres of cleared land for parking. She said the site must also be within four miles of the city limits of Gainesville and the site must be available for all of January and part of February because it takes two weeks to set up for the event and a week to take it down. There must be two main access points, one of which must be off of a four-lane highway. The site also must have infrastructure such as water, power, and fencing; amenities such as flushable toilets; a campground for vendors and performers; a tree perimeter; and a paved trail or road to enable ADA and EMS access.

Andrei said the site must be within four miles of city limits because the work of setting up and taking down the sets and props is done by Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs staff, and the travel becomes more expensive if the site is farther out; she said that because the City of Gainesville pays the costs of the event, it’s also important that the economic impact from people visiting the area go to the City. 

40 sites evaluated, found to be unviable

City staff have evaluated more than 40 potential locations, and none of them were found to be viable. Andrei said the Alachua County Agriculture and Equestrian Center doesn’t have a large enough usable space; West End does not have enough parking; the Gainesville Raceway does not include water or power, and an insurance company said they could not provide a policy for the event at that site; Cuscowilla Nature Center doesn’t have enough usable space; Citizens Field does not have adequate parking, and the traffic impact to the area would be too great. Staff also looked at a property on Waldo Road near the airport, but FAA sound restrictions prevent an event from being held that close to the airport. A list of private properties and City-owned properties were also found to be “unviable for one reason or another.”

Downsides of Depot Park include limited parking and the need to reduce the event to a single weekend because of the expense of providing security for all of the vendor and event spaces between the weekends. The City is also unable to charge admission fees, which have traditionally been the main revenue source to offset the costs of the event. Andrei said it would cost about $130,000 to support another year at Depot Park, so staff recommends seeking other funding sources.

Mayor Ward: “We don’t have that unique site anymore, so we’re going to have to change some of the parameters as this moves forward. And that is just a thing that we’re all going to have to come to grips with.”

Mayor Harvey Ward said, “If we expect to find a spot to make it look exactly like it looked in 2019 or 2020,… we’re going to continue to be disappointed, because that was a unique site. We don’t have that unique site anymore, so we’re going to have to change some of the parameters as this moves forward. And that is just a thing that we’re all going to have to come to grips with.”

Logistics of ticket sales at Depot Park are “extreme”

Commissioner Bryan Eastman said the event is “everything that people love about Gainesville.” He asked why they could not charge admission at Depot Park, and Andrei said the logistics of that are “extreme” because they would need to fence the entire space with temporary fencing, which “has a large cost,” partially because it can’t be installed with stakes at Depot Park. The time involved in setting up and taking down the fencing would also close off the park for an extended period of time before and after the event. A secure ticket office and other infrastructure would also be needed to sell and collect tickets.

Ward said the Koppers site is “an actual, no-kidding, Superfund site” that is not for sale, and “until the EPA decides that [the cleanup] is going to finish, and they’re not going to decide that in the next three and a half years, I promise you, that just isn’t part of our conversation. It’s the perfect site for something like this, but we don’t own it, and it’s not going to be available any time in the very near future.”

Issues with the Job Corps site

In response to a question from Ward about using the Job Corps site, Phil Mann, Special Adviser to the City Manager said, “The Job Corps site is approximately 40 acres… A large portion of the middle of it [is] wetlands… There’s some contamination on the site, and [the federal government has] yet to identify exactly what that is, but we will. They would bear the responsibility for the contamination forever, but we don’t know what we’ll be able to develop around it at this time.”

Mann also cautioned that “the way the feds disperse the property – we have to pick a use, and we can only use it for that use. The use we’ve identified currently is for emergency management, so we could do combined police/fire training, but we could change that to parks and rec space if we wanted to, or we could put in applications for both.”

Ward said he was interested in hearing “ideas that don’t seem to work, that might be problematic… I think everyone wants this to continue,… so let’s stretch… Let’s try to think of different ways to get stuff to work, because I don’t want to keep wishing that a perfect solution would fall out of the sky… We are interested in hearing shaky ideas and figuring out how we can help you make them work… Maybe somebody is willing to provide a sponsorship – or three or four… I want to think different because… the community is not going to believe that we’re trying to solve it if we don’t find the solution.”

Eastman said that having the event in Depot Park brings a lot of business to downtown establishments and makes it “a very interesting weekend” downtown. He didn’t want to give up on the idea of holding the event at Depot Park and finding a way to charge for tickets to make it financially sustainable.

Nothing can be anchored into the ground at Depot Park because it’s a brownfield site

Director of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs Roxy Gonzalez said she would like the City to help in getting the County to co-sponsor the event, including contributing funding, “because we do bring in economic impact, not just city-wide but county-wide, as well.” She said her staff will come back with out-of-the-box ideas for future years, but this year, a decision needs to be made because January is “going to come quick.” She added that jousting can’t be done at Depot Park “because it’s a brownfield.”

Public comment

During public comment, a vendor said that limiting the event to one weekend is “tough on the vendor side of things” because of the amount of setup relative to the length of the event. He said, “A lot of other vendors are going to go places where it’s easier… [and] where they’re going to make money because they’re going multiple weekends in a row.” He said the inability to put stakes in the ground (because it’s a brownfield) requires vendors to invest in different equipment to anchor their tents, which may not be worth it for one weekend.

The owner of the Waldo Motorsports property said they have 137 acres, including 70 RV sites and a hotel nearby. The property already has electricity and water available and a gate for ticket sales. 

Ward said, “I’m certain that the Mayor of Waldo would love this economic opportunity, but we don’t work for Waldo.”

A participant urged the City to find a permanent site and said the Living Chessboard show has been unable to put up its full set because they can’t use stakes to anchor their tents at Depot Park. “It’s a little bit hard to stay in the 1100s when you have cars zipping by you and you can very clearly see them.”

Ward: “It’s pretty rare that we go through a long list of speakers who all agree with what we’ve already talked about. I love that.”

After public comment, Ward said, “It’s pretty rare that we go through a long list of speakers who all agree with what we’ve already talked about. I love that. Don’t be a stranger.”

Commissioner Ed Book asked why the event can’t run over multiple weekends, and Gonzalez said the City would need to provide security 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to protect the property of the vendors and entertainers; she said the whole park would have to be closed from several days before to several days after the event, although there may be a way to just have the playground open. However, she said, closing the park would affect trail access.

In response to a question from Book, Gonzalez said that if they found a venue right away, the event could possibly be held there in 2027, but if there are significant infrastructure needs, it might be 2028 before it could move to the new venue. She said the plan is to hold the event at Depot Park until then “while still trying to be as innovative as possible, to increase what’s happening there and improve what’s happening there.”

Book suggests extending the event to other downtown venues

For 2026, Book suggested road closures around Depot Park that could add “an acre, two acres, three acres,” along with extending the venue into Heartwood, Bo Diddley, The Knot, First Magnitude, etc. 

Eastman wanted to figure out how to make it a three-day weekend, and he said that if they decide to move it to a property that is well outside the city limits, it should be run by a nonprofit or a mix of City and County staff, but not just City staff. However, he also said he was “kind of partial to figuring out if there’s some way to make it a sustainable event at Depot Park, within our downtown.” 

Gonzalez said Depot Park “is not going to give the effect of a medieval fair, no matter what, because it’s a brownfield. I can’t get those tents pinned into that ground… The ‘feel’ is what brings the passion… And to take that away from them,… I think we’ve gone backwards with that if we did that at Depot Park.” She added that keeping it at Depot Park would prevent it from growing. 

Andrei said it would be even harder to create an immersive feeling if the event were spread over downtown. 

Motion

Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut made a motion to 1) Direct the City Manager to return with recommendations to fund the Hoggetowne Medieval Faire for 2026 and explore partnerships; 2) Explore alternative sites for the medieval fair, such as the Gainesville Raceway and the Job Corps Center. 

Book suggested talking to the Chamber of Commerce because “economic development flows through this event.”

Eastman suggested that businesses may want to sponsor the event.

The motion passed unanimously, with Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker absent.