The Gainesville City Commission voted to proceed with a contract for two school zone cameras and set a maximum $1.8 million price tag for a refresh of City Hall Plaza. 

The commission also settled a split vote by citizen boards on whether to give a local historic designation to the Gainesville Lodge on University Avenue across from the Seagle Building. 

The school camera issue was settled earlier this year, and city staff brought forward a contract with RedSpeed Florida, LLC to run the program at Lincoln Middle School and Talbot Elementary School. The City Commission approved the contract without comment. 

The contract will be paid through the fines issued to drivers, levied for anyone going more than 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit during school hours. Florida statutes mandate how the fines are divided, as shown below. 

Split for the school zone $100 fine: 

• $60 to the police department (with RedSpeed Florida, LLC getting $21) 

• $20 to Florida’s general revenue fund 

• $12 to the county school district 

• $5 to crossing guard programs 

• $3 to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for training.  

The city’s funds are required to pay for the program and other public and pedestrian safety initiatives.     

The City Commission decided to start with only two school zones to gauge the time burden on Gainesville Police Department staff. Chief Nelson Moya told the commission during earlier votes that each flagged driver must be approved manually by staff before the contractor sends the fine. 

Gainesville has also moved forward with red-light cameras, but the implementation has yet to move forward. 

For the City Plaza, the fountains out front have caused maintenance problems, and the City Commission decided to remove them and use additional funds to refresh the plaza. 

Phil Mann, special projects administrator, said the design plans should be finished in the next month with construction following by the first of November. 

He said the construction, performed by Scherer Construction, will start in the southeast corner at the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. The goal is to finish that section by MLK Jr. Day in January and the rest by April 2026—a timeline Mayor Harvey Ward called ambitious. 

The new plaza will open up the two sunken gardens and move the sister cities display to one of them. The flagpole will come closer to the building, where a speaking platform will be installed for official ceremonies or citizen gatherings. 

City staff said they would look into using the bricks removed from Gainesville’s three rainbow sidewalks within the plaza. Although Bryan Singleton, special advisor to the city manager, said the bricks are historic and beveled, which makes them uneven and difficult to walk on for some. He said there are enough bricks to use in a part of the plaza and another art installation in the future. 

In the evening session, the commissioners discussed Gainesville Lodge. Once a Travelodge, a brand with locations nationwide, before changing ownership. 

The motel got renovated and subsequently fell into disrepair, but new owners, including former Gainesville city manager Anthony Lyons, hope to return the motel to its historic roots. 

Lyons said that section of University Avenue has seen a recent revival, citing Santa Fe College’s new Blount Hall and a renovated Seagle Building. He said the old Baptist church next to the motel is likely to be next; it’s already owned by Trimark, which redid the Seagle Building. 

Lyons said he and his partners want the Gainesville Lodge to also help recharge the area. 

The historic designation expands grant opportunities for the renovations and also offers some tax deferrals. 

Gainesville commissioners agreed that while not the site of something famous or infamous nor a building of outstanding architectural significance, it does define a period of history and is a lone survivor of the roadside motels that used to dot US 441—including the Casa Loma Lodge, the Francisco Motel, the Bambi Motel and the Florida Motel. 

The commission unanimously agreed to give the historic designation in alignment with the Gainesville Historic Preservation Board. The City Plan Board voted 4-1 not to give the designation, saying it failed to carry enough historical value.