City Commission Hears Update on Streatery Plans; Votes to Proceed with Design Phase and Get Public Feedback
The City Commission voted to proceed with the final design of the Streatery on Thursday.
The Streatery is a plan by the City of Gainesville to expand the pedestrian-only area in Downtown Gainesville from SW 1st Ave and SW 2nd St to Main St for shopping and entertainment. The project is estimated to cost $3.2 million.
The Streatery was first developed in September 2020, but it hasn’t expanded past a section of 1st Ave.
Under the expansion, the Streatery would still be open to emergency vehicles.
Public Works Director Brian Singleton gave a presentation to the city commission on the Streatery.
Singleton said, “A lot of the feedback we get from the downtown area is that during the hours businesses are active, people are trying to enjoy outdoor seating, and our street lighting is too bright.”
City Commissioners shared their opinions on whether or not there should be sitting in the middle of the Streatery.
Singleton said seating needed to be placed in the middle to make room for emergency vehicles. Several commissioners made comments about the seats being in a strange place or that it’d be too hot to sit.
Commissioner Desmond Duncan-Walker said safety is more important than comfort and that she and her colleagues should follow their staff’s recommendation by keeping the seating in the middle.
Singleton said commissioners would have the option of making the Streatery entirely brick, or they could put a concrete option down the middle. He said local advisory boards were mostly uninterested in a concrete option, but there were concerns about the ability of people in wheelchairs or riding scooters to traverse the bricks.
The brick/concrete hybrid option would save the city $400,000.
Public Works Director Brian Singleton telling the commissioners the brick/concrete option would save $400,000. (City of Gainesville)
The city will be developing an additional parking building in Lot 10 in February 2026. The parking building was planned with the Streatery in mind.
Singleton said the Streatery can be rebranded under a different name if the commission desires.
Eastman said, “I think we have an opportunity here to collect some names…. We could ask the community what they want, and they could vote on the name.”
Ward said, “To be clear, I’m gonna call it the Streatery for the rest of my life because I’m used to it now. Just like the Gulf of Mexico.”
Eastman asked if it’d be possible to design the Streatery to allow car usage while still prioritizing pedestrians, and Singleton said it would.
Commissioner James Ingle said, “As someone who has frequented some of those bars [downtown], Mark Street and Lucy’s, that kind of area. They have had plumbing problems for as long as I can remember. Is there any way to tie them in to fix some of those long-term problems with existing businesses?”
Singleton said Public Works has been working with Gainesville Regional Utilities and local businesses to resolve those issues.
Ward said Gainesville “needs to do something infrastructure-wise. We keep kicking this down the road, but we’ve got drainage issues from a 100+-year-old system. It needs to be addressed…. We will never arrive at a perfect solution. The longer we wait, the more it costs.”
President of the AMJ property company, Michael Warren, said, “AMJ has been a long-term and major investor in the downtown for decades. We want a thriving downtown that includes having people live and work in the downtown area…. However, I'm a little concerned that instead of a small park in the middle of a concrete city, we may end up with a very different Streatery; an outdoor nightclub on a paved street with a stage and over a dozen food trucks in an open carry area. In order to provide quality accommodations for the residents who may come to live in the Lot 10 apartments, we need to have an environment that allows people to have a quiet evening and enjoy quiet nights. I'm not sure that an outdoor nightclub with a bandstand at the front door of their home would provide a compatible environment.”
Local realtor and Downtown Advisory Board member Teresa Callen spoke for five minutes instead of the three granted by the city, and Ward slowly grew more annoyed.
Callen said, “I live downtown, and I understand the needs of both our residents to have respite and also to have a place to entertain themselves…. We are replete with areas of entertainment that are sort of not performing right now. Maybe we don't have activators or people there who are focused on making things happen within those areas regularly. It certainly seems that some of those areas, though, are transitioning from being entertainment spaces to also parks that are incredibly useful to our downtown residents. Depot Park is the best example of that. It can convert back and forth from a festival area to an actual park that acts as an amenity to anybody who wants to develop in that area, any multifamily concept…. With respect to student housing or any kind of housing, whether it's workforce or student, any housing that can be created downtown is reliant upon the amenities that are adjacent to that housing. I have an apartment structure in College Park, and if you paid me $100 to spend the night in it, I would not on a game night because it is loud and people are partying right around the corner from that structure…. I know that a lot of my tenants in that building have sound-deadening machines and so forth in their units so they don't have to hear the noise from the exterior…. We have to really think about how the street is going to function into perpetuity. While the How Bazar is there now doing their night markets, that's wonderful, and we're all excited about that; but we don't know that How Bazar is going to be a permanent fixture on the street."
Ward began indicating that Callen needed to wrap her comments up.
Callen continued, "We need residents downtown for economic development and for the furtherance of our economy. I speak to tenants and people who own buildings down there who are restaurateurs. They think it's disruptive to have food trucks parked in front of their facilities.”
“I'm going to need you to wrap up,” said Ward.
Callen continued, “They're paying extremely high rents when we have operators and people who own the buildings who are actually giving away half of their rent in order to accommodate them. We have a tremendous amount of vacancies.”
“You're a minute and a half over. I need you to wrap up,” said Ward again.
“Excuse me, Harvey, please, for a second,” said Callen.
Callen continued, “The reason we have vacancies is because we don't have enough people living in the district to make an impact economically during the day, which makes a huge difference in whether or not we have a viable downtown. If you look at Savannah and places of that nature—”
“You're five minutes into a three-minute comment. Please stop,” Ward said demandingly.
“Thanks. Well, I'm glad you appreciate my opinion,” said Callen.
Ward responded, “Hold on. Let's be real clear. We do three minutes for public comment, and I give a lot of flexibility with that.”
Callen responded, “The Downtown Advisory Board has given three of their meetings to the idea of the Streatery.”
Ward said, “I understand. We have had five or six votes on this already. We've talked about it for four and a half years. I appreciate you being here, but we have rules, and I gave you a lot of extra time.”
Callen asked, “Do we put out a request for proposal (RFP) for this design? Can anybody tell me that? Okay.” Callen sat back down.
“Who is next?” Asked Ward.
Chair of the Downtown Advisory Board, Linda McGurn, said, “The highest priority should be given to urban living because the most important thing for downtown is people living there. You have an opportunity with Lot 10 to be the highest-profile and transformational project for downtown that has happened in many years. You need to think about how people are affected by noise. I live downtown, and we had to work out noise relations with Fat Tuesdays when it was on the corner…. This street needs to be something attractive, something that brings people…. You’re gonna spend $3 million, and you need to do it right.”
Duncan-Walker said “I will not support anything that is going to cause any type of disruption to the new neighbors and families we’re bringing into Lot 10. I think it’s important for us to make those kinds of statements on the front end. I don’t like getting to the end of something and trying to overcorrect. I like to make my intentions known upfront.”
Ward said, “Whenever we talk about the Streatery, we end up having about 17 different conversations…. We’re [making a motion] about the basic infrastructure that’s going to go there….We’ve had four and a half years of back-and-forth, and the puddles get bigger while we do that.”
The commissioners unanimously passed a motion to ask City Manager Cynthia Curry to “(1) proceed with the final design of the Streatery with brick pavers, gateway amenities at S Main St, and planters/seating; (2) enter into a Task Assignment with JBPro in the amount of $162,734 for the final design of the Streatery, subject to approval by the City Attorney as to form and legality. (3) Bring back to the commission a name and branding for SW 1st with feedback from the public. (4) Bring back to the Commission the design of landscaping and seating before construction and (5) bring back discussion whether food trucks and stages are allowed and under what circumstances.”
