The Gainesville City Commission voted Thursday to rezone the old Terwilliger Elementary School site for potential future development and to divide $170,000 in grant funding to the Seagle Building, Matheson House and the Florida Theatre.
The commissioners also dual named NW First Street as Terry Fleming Street in honor of the local activist who pushed to create the rainbow sidewalks downtown. The sidewalks were removed in September, and the City Commission discussed how the bricks could be reused.
Terwilliger Elementary rezoning
The School Board of Alachua County (SBAC) closed the old Terwilliger Elementary, off SW 62nd Avenue and across from the Oaks Mall, in 2021 after constructing a new building west of Gainesville.
The building stood vacant for several years and had issues with trespassing as the SBAC decided how to move forward with the property. The school board recently voted to demolish the building, leaving the 15-acre site an open field.
The SBAC asked Gainesville to approve a new land use and zoning for the land to prepare for a potential future sale and development. The City Commission unanimously agreed to changing the site from Education to Urban Mixed-Use land use and Urban 6 zoning.
If approved on final reading, the site could see residential or commercial development. The zoning limits building height to four stories and density to 50 units per acre.
Any future development would still need to submit a plan to the city for approval, but the land use and zoning set a cap on what that plan could look like.
Business improvement grant
The City Commission authorized the use of more money than it expected through a downtown business improvement grant funded by the Gainesville Community Reinvestment Area.
The city entered the fiscal year with $330,000 for the grant program and planned to use the funds in two separate cycles, with half spent in each cycle. The first cycle spent the $165,000 and the second was expected to do the same when one of the grantees (Gainesville Historic Properties) offered to defer part of its funding.
The deferred money could then be used to get the second cycle grant applicants closer to the funding they requested.
But the parameters of the grant program don’t allow such an action, so staff could not recommend the redesignation against policy put in place by the commission. The City Commission, though, said it liked the idea.
The redesignation switched the funding for the second cycle to the following:
- Original Recommendation
- Seagle Building: $147,513
- Florida Theatre: $28,241
- Redesignation Recommendation
- Seagle Building: $95,000
- Florida Theatre: $40,377
- Matheson House: $40,377
Mayor Harvey Ward pushed to fund all three projects at their requested level instead of waiting for the next cycle to open. He said prices will only get more expensive, and many of the same projects apply to successive cycles.
The commission only voted on the redesignation recommendation in a 4-2 vote, with Ward and Commissioner Casey Willits in dissent.
Besides these programs, the city also approved $117,700 for the Pleasant Street Civil Rights & Cultural Center.
Terry Fleming Street
The commissioners voted to dual name NE/SE First Street from NE Second Street to SE Second Street in honor of Terry Fleming, an LGBTQ activist who spearheaded the effort to create the rainbow sidewalks downtown.
Fleming, who died in 2020 at 58 years old, started Gainesville’s Pride Center, and the city’s resolution also highlighted his advocacy for homeless services and work to get GRACE Marketplace up and running. Ward called Fleming a personal friend, and commissioners James Ingle and Casey Willits both credited him with helping them get started in local politics.
“I’m so thrilled that we can do this on First Street as one step in memorializing, not just Terry Fleming, but the entire LGBTQ plus community and the history in Gainesville and in Florida,” Willits said. “This that first step, and we have some more ahead of us.”
The renaming comes just over a month after the state required Gainesville and other Florida cities to remove rainbow sidewalks and other street art, a move that has been strongly critiqued by local officials.
Besides rainbow art, the state required the removal of other signage not approved in state policy, including the green bike boulevard squares.
Gainesville residents quickly pivoted to the dual-named road as a way to remember Fleming, and city officials approved reusing the bricks from the removed sidewalks in the renovated City Hall plaza.
City staff said the bricks could be installed in the plaza in an area where people can stay and take photos.
The commissioners approved the plan, and Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut made a second motion directing staff to also research the possibility of a plaque at the site.
Ward said he’d also like to install a type of LGBTQ art installation in each district of the city.