Silva: GRUA should consider long-term interests when making Power District decisions
Letter to the editor
Dear GRUA members,
As you prepare to meet with the City Commission on Wednesday, please consider the following questions and concerns about the Power District item on the agenda. How can the Power District’s future be left for a chosen real estate brokerage firm to influence whether to sell 24 acres of public property as-is, maybe to the highest bidder, or follow long-sought incremental redevelopment for greatest benefit to the public and the local economy? That is, isn’t it backward for the RFP to go out on February 20 for the bid winner to indicate how to sell GRU properties rather than GRUA discussing options on February 21 before sending out an RFP? The option selected will to a great extent determine the Power District’s future.
Page 9 of the presentation in the backup of your February 21 meeting outlines two options:
But page 10 says the RFP already went out (the day before your meeting, staff said) for the bid winner to designate the option and then sell the properties:
GRUA’s charge to stabilize the utility can’t entirely override the City’s long-term best interests. Neither can City Government’s self-inflicted fiscal disasters or the power of UF and other huge corporate entities, all of which have mushroomed since early 2016. Before then, a robust public consensus was reached on what should happen with GRU properties, favoring local ownership, homegrown businesses, building reuse, public spaces, human scale, and incremental development, as these sentences from the 2013 Power District plan conclude:
“The land that GRU will vacate is an opportunity to catalyze development across the district and establish a model for how economic development can be balanced with the scale, character and needs of the surrounding neighborhoods. This plan provides the guidelines for a new model of urban density, one that provides density in a scale appropriate to the community. By breaking down the scale of development, this plan also meters the pace of growth, providing small, incremental units that can develop slowly, if necessary, over time. Following this course, the Power District will unify the urban heart of Gainesville as an engine for growth and a hub for the community long into the future.”
That was then and this is now, with UF and large developer-investor interests having outsized influence on City Government. UF largely wrote the downtown plan that calls for more incentives for market-rate apartments, among other measures, and the City is paying embedded developer consultant and lobbyist CHW to run major City projects (CHW was bought last month by NASDAQ-traded NV5, by the way). The City previously paid Colliers International (with a personal connection to CHW) to update GRU property disposition in 2021; one enthusiastic proponent said Colliers would “market Gainesville to the world,” an extractive economic model in contrast to the broad support for smaller-scale local redevelopment. He also said the City (now GRU?) would have to remediate environmental issues. By March 2023, staff was recommending only these priorities for selling off GRU properties:
- Maximize the sale proceeds of the property
- Recognize environmental liability of the site
- Seek opportunities for economic development of site
Once the properties are sold, there’s no going back, no viable controls, no guarantee deep-pocketed UF and affiliates won’t end up with big pieces still off local tax rolls. The City has let go of assets on UF’s and other buyers’ terms and hasn’t gotten compliance with agreements for housing or much else. When it exerts no leverage, the public loses. (Just last week, City staff said bringing former Fire Station 1 on South Main up to code would cost $6 million, inevitably meaning demolition and a fire-sale price; a contractor very familiar with the building said that’s preposterous.)
So, as you GRUA members work hard to sort through the wreckage of years of poor decisions and unaccountable spending, please take time to review the history and strongly consider the long-term benefit of the Power District plat concept to sell individual lots for actual best use, results, and perhaps price, too. Thank you.
Tana Silva, Gainesville
The opinions expressed by letter or opinion writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AlachuaChronicle.com. Letters may be submitted to info@alachuachronicle.com and are published at the discretion of the editor.
The city should require all new housing there be deed restricted owner-occupied units. No residential rentals. That way a real community can develop over time, when stakeholders actually live there too.
Craig Carter’s enthusiasm for this ridiculous proposal speaks volumes.
Not only is the “authority illegitimate – only 1 of it’s members meets the basic and simple residency requirements, but they are otherwise not qualified to make this decision, which will reset downtown for ever. This part of downtown has exploded with new businesses and public attendance since Depot Park was open – thanks Pegeen! Urban planners dream of something so wildly successful at reasonably low cost but almost never achieve it. Now we have a handful of guys who don’t live in Gainesville, and are only here because they probably donated to GOP officials who get never get elected in Gainesville. This decision requires study, including citizen input – yes, there will be special interest groups trying to gain advantage – and maybe some of the same planners who came up with Depot Park. It doesn’t have to stay public property to be well planned and the city can’t afford to keep it. Fine. But don’t sell to the highest bidder, unless that bidder meets goals citizens define. This is a golden opportunity and Gainesville – and the “authority” should have the humility – to recognize that.
Jazzman, your remarks apply as well to a small handful of city commission members and staff who apparently are determined to privatize prime acreage beside wildly successful Depot Park without the genuine citizen input or even awareness such a decision deserves, based on a curiously unsolicited proposal that names embedded CHW in it. For potentially little to no compensation and possibly at a cost to taxpayers. The one news story about the deal that’s been quietly brewing with staff support and encouragement for a few years played it mostly as an expansion of a small niche gym, one of thousands of businesses in the city. The proposal and city involvement raise worrisome questions, beginning with how two well-meaning small-business owners could finance redevelopment of 5.2 premier acres with a bigger version of a private rock gym that already exists across Main Street, a private skate park, an unlikely surf wave pool, yet another restaurant and food truck space, and three dozen residences. The property has been shown on at least one development map for more highrise apartments, and that’s the probable outcome of its privatization, same as the adjoining 4+ private acres south of the park. A new commissioner said “developers like multimodal trails,” and surely parks as well. Paid for and very much liked by the public, as you can see by the crowds in Depot Park and the trails through it. With new WSPP sales taxes and collective input, that public property could make a fabulous expansion of Depot Park open to everyone, skate park, ball courts, pavilion, playground, garden, or whatever else. As you say, this too is a golden opportunity for future generations to enjoy — or for a few people to fumble.
I don’t follow local politics as closely as you obviously do, so unaware of the undercurrents or the “players” that you speak of. UF Inc’s intent to shrug off housing students is a pretty established fact by now, as it’s abandoning the previously self imposed limit on students. One would hope that new residences would attract those with long term plans and more motivation to be downtown than a short crawl home at 2:00 AM – see the Duckpond popularity, near SE and for better or worse gentrifying near NW. Even Winn Dixie could survive in that scenario.
Hopefully your letter helps raise cautionary signs and serious discussion about the future. Cities rarely get this kind of opportunity, or if they do, even more rare to have the plate set for them like Depot Park has.
“Once the properties are sold, there’s no going back, no viable controls, no guarantee deep-pocketed UF and affiliates won’t end up with big pieces still off local tax rolls,”…or given away by people who have decided they’d rather not pay the exorbitant property taxes imposed on their properties but enjoy the tax-free benefit of keeping their properties.
Been saying that for years, maybe your letter will garner more attention.
Seems like the first thing they should consider is “will GRU actually need that land for its own use, for solar fields, generation plants, fuel storage, etc” instead of turning it loose to build more empty apartments (which, ironically, will consume more power).
The City should put their money where their mouth is. Have some of the “well to do” Jazzmen of the community get together and donate/invest services and funds to build a 4 or 6 story complex for the homeless. It would be a community neighborhood like they seem to promote whenever they get the chance. Close to the corners of intersections, close to public transportation, and last but not least, close to the courthouses. Jazzman could hire laborers for above minimum wages and help with design and construction costs by donating his time. People get employment, have wages so they don’t have panhandle and the city maintains ownership of the property.
Let’s see how far their hypocrisy goes.
Not only would I not qualify for membership in the “well to do Jazzmen of the community” group you propose, I have not advocated for building apartments for the homeless, downtown or anywhere. But hey, if you prefer wrestling with strawmen you construct rather than other humans, I’m sure you can probably win a few rounds.
No offense to the author of this, but could someone boil down his concern, I’m not smart enough to understand. Is his issue that the property not necessarily go to highest bidder if they don’t agree to certain use requirements of the land?
UF is spearheading the redevelopment of Gainesville into a United Nations “model city” aka ‘New American City’. Regardless of the wants and needs of the city residents, UF will do what it must to continue pushing its globalist-centric plan forward. That plot of land downtown is exactly what they need for the master plan. UF is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and so are the lobbyist/consultants that serve them (like CHW)
https://strategicdevelopment.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/docs/SDP_Executive_Summary_FINAL.pdf
https://strategicdevelopment.ufl.edu/about/
https://facilities.ufl.edu/campus-planning/strategic-development-plan/
https://www.globalrefuge.org/what-we-do/inclusion-and-empowerment/new-american-cities/
The executive summary of the plan envisions turning the area south of downtown into a ‘walkable’ arts district. So this would probably preclude getting the property back onto the tax roles anytime soon.
“Unveiling the “New American City” initiative as a UF Strategic Plan Steering Committee Member, 2026”
“…At the same time, Bryan served in leadership of numerous community groups such as the board of Grace Marketplace, working to end homelessness. He also served as a Steering Committee member of the University of Florida’s Strategic Plan, advising the university in how they can better work with the city.“
https://bryaneastman.com/about
Thanks. If the UN is in favor of something I’m against it
Agree…nothing good comes from multinational government objectives. And I’m not positive if that’s what the authors main concern is but that’s definitely what’s happening here.
There is absolutely nothing in your links substantiating your paranoid vison of a UN take over of Gainesville. Yeah, there are foreign students here – good, great! – but they are about 8% of the total, the majority of whom come from Florida. Cripes, what ignorant tripe.
Believe what you want…you’re a lost soul. The links repetitively reference the New American City and Smart City concept. These are both known movements that can be verified by simple research. I’m sorry you cannot put two and two together. It’s literally right in front of your face…read the damn words on the above links. And then do your own research on the smart city, new American city, 15 min city (liberal nomenclature), and freedom city (trump nomenclature). It isn’t paranoid when they’re rubbing it straight in your face. What the hell is wrong with you? All you do is run interference for all of these federal and internationally backed crackpot plans. You push Covid shots by day and new American cities by night