Downtown Gainesville deep-dive
Hello from Gainesville, Florida. It's Monday, March 30, and you're listening to StreetSmart. I'm Seth Johnson. StreetSmart is a weekly podcast from Mainstreet Daily News, where we cover local news that informs, engages, and inspires listeners like you. A big thanks to our sponsor, Forest Meadows Funeral Home, where compassion meets experience.
Seth Johnson:Check out their beautiful gardens, funeral home, and tribute center. Formations, funerals, and memorials all in one trusted place. With exceptional care and personal attention, Forest Meadows is here to honor every life with care. Here's the top headlines we're rounding up.
Seth Johnson:The Floridan aquifer has hit its lowest level since 2011 after dipping below the twentieth percentile. With little rain in March, the rainfall deficit could grow beyond 15 inches.
Seth Johnson:B'z Gelati opened a permanent storefront in Gainesville on Saturday. The business has served its homemade honey sweetened gelati since 2018 out of food trucks. The new location called The Hive is off North West 23rd Avenue at Baloo's Doughnuts and Coffee.
Seth Johnson:Two Gainesville schools combined to win all five sections at the twenty twenty six Florida State Scholastic Chess Championship. The Frazer School led the way winning three of the championship while Oak Hall School captured the other two titles. Queen of Peace Catholic Academy also earned multiple top five finishes.
Seth Johnson:HCA Florida launched air ambulance services for Levy, Gilchrist and Dixie Counties. The helicopter based in Chiefland will take patients to hospitals in Gainesville and Ocala. HCA Florida North Florida Hospital receives over 3,300 ambulance patients from those counties each year.
Seth Johnson:The Newberry City Commission voted to dissolve the city's board of adjustment last week. Staff said consolidating the board with the commission would increase efficiency as the members are the same for each. The commission also approved a land use amendment for a development that will bring 500 homes near Champions Park.
Seth Johnson:As always, visit mainstreetdailynews.com for more details on our stories. Thanks to our generous members, this news stays free for the whole community with no paywall.
Seth Johnson:Thanks again for listening to StreetSmart. I'm Seth Johnson. With me in the studio today is reporter Lillian Hamman, and Lillian and Nick gave away Crayola Experience tickets last week, and we are excited to announce the winner this week.
Lillian Hamman:That's right. Our winner for this week is StreetSmart listener, Erin Hitt.
Seth Johnson:We are excited to get those Crayola Experience tickets over to her that she can use anytime in the coming months. And keep listening to StreetSmart. We'll try and get some more tickets on here for you guys to enter for a chance to win.
Lillian Hamman:And for anybody who didn't win the Crayola Experience tickets, there is still plenty to do here in Alachua County. And today, we're zoning in on downtown Gainesville and things going on there.
Seth Johnson:Yeah. At the end of the program, we always have upcoming events and several of those take place in Gainesville. But today for our feature stories, we're kind of just focusing all in on downtown Gainesville. There's been several stories coming up recently that have to do with it, so we thought we'd round them all up. Now, Lillian, what do you hear when people talk about downtown Gainesville?
Lillian Hamman:I hear people talk a lot about the food scene and a lot of the arts and culture going on, Hippodrome and things going on at Heartwood Soundstage. But I'm not down there a whole lot considering my beats are generally twenty to thirty minutes outside of Gainesville in the rural communities. But you know it in and out after five years here, don't you, Seth?
Seth Johnson:Yeah. I'm down there pretty frequently, usually multiple times a week. I feel like I hear a lot, especially on social media and stuff, when something concerning downtown comes up about parking, and you hear a lot about homelessness and then things to do. Are there things to do or are there not? Sometimes it can be a debate on whether or not it's an active downtown.
Seth Johnson:And we're gonna talk about at least two of those here. Parking, there's not been anything new on that. The city switched to paid parking and it's the same system in place. I've got my parking spot down where I know I can go and park and walk a couple blocks or anywhere I need to be. But, we are gonna kind of hone in on homelessness, which there's been some activity on, and then things to do.
Seth Johnson:There's been a couple openings and a couple things on the horizon. So on homelessness, St. Francis House has historically been the downtown shelter. It's the area downtown where homeless people can get meals and they have day services there, but they announced a couple weeks ago that they would be closing their downtown shelter.
Lillian Hamman:Where is that shelter located?
Seth Johnson:It's off of South Main Street, just north of Depot Park, kind of in between Depot Park and University Avenue,
Lillian Hamman:Ah right.
Seth Johnson:But they will be closing on April 16. And I talked with their executive director and she said the operational costs have just been too high and they've been too high for a long time. I don't think it really surprised that many people within the homeless services kind of sector that they would be closing their downtown shelter. The building's been for sale for multiple years now. They sold their Sunrise Inn a a couple years ago and have said they've been trying to kind of stabilize their finances.
Seth Johnson:Their executive director also told me that they weren't seeing their day services have an impact. She said it's kind of managing people's homelessness without solving it. People who come in for day services weren't taking advantage of case managers who could put them on a plan to get into housing or to get out of their situation, whereas they wanna double down on the family homelessness that they've been addressing. She said these are people who are oftentimes homeless for the very first time. You know, they had a medical bill, a car, mechanical issue crop up and kind of put them under and put them to where they're sleeping in their car or they're couch surfing from house to house.
Lillian Hamman:And how's this closure for the downtown location going to impact the people they've been serving?
Seth Johnson:Obviously, the people who use downtown shelter as a cold night shelter or for those day services like laundry and food and meals will have to find another place to get those services. And the executive director said they pointed them to churches in the area who also do meals and given them a schedule for that. Obviously, Grace Marketplace is several miles away, but is the area shelter for adults where they can still get services. For the families that they deal with, and St. Francis House has dealt with several families, currently about 40 individuals, Those services are going to get picked up by Family Promise.
Seth Johnson:So the Continuum of Care in Alachua County, which kind of coordinates all these homeless service providers, allocated $35,000 to Family Promise. And Family Promise is gonna use that to help transition into housing these families by paying for first month, last month rent and some other services. And then St. Francis House is still gonna deal with some of those wraparound services with the case management with these families. I spoke with the new CEO at Grace Marketplace, and he said they haven't seen any impacts yet.
Seth Johnson:The shelter's obviously still gonna be operating until April 16, but he said that they have made sure that there's six women's beds available, and they also are gonna be opening a new shelter in just the next couple of weeks, which will give them some flexibility as well with beds. One interesting thing that came out of all the conversations I had when I was talking with the task force for ending homelessness, who's kind of the head of that continuum of care that I mentioned, is the idea of focusing on family homelessness and also using perhaps resources that we have that we haven't used towards homelessness before as a community. And especially empty schools came up in two different conversations. You know, can there be a partnership with the school board to use, school buildings as family resource centers and maybe even very temporary housing for these families? And today, actually, the Task Force for Ending Homelessness is having a homelessness summit, specifically looking at family homelessness here in Gainesville.
Seth Johnson:They sold out on attendees coming in with about 130 people. Alachua County Public Schools will actually be presenting there at that summit. So there's been some talk in that area and maybe something that will move forward in the coming months and years.
Lillian Hamman:The issue of homelessness does continue to kind of ebb and flow with different commissions and organizations that come to the city, and so do the different businesses that come to downtown, including Kushi&Co.
Seth Johnson:Kushi&Co. and some other new businesses have opened Downtown. And something interesting that we were able to do a story on recently is the vacancy rate for downtown storefronts. Lillian, any guesses on what the vacancy rate is at? Don't look down. Don't look at
Lillian Hamman:Don't look at my notes.
Seth Johnson:Okay. I'm guessing you're gonna guess 22%.
Lillian Hamman:Well, I was.
Seth Johnson:Alright. The downtown vacancy rate for storefronts is about 22% according to staff they presented to the Downtown Advisory Board in March. And that vacancy rate has to do with kind of a very honed in core downtown area that's about 20 blocks. It was about four blocks by five blocks, so 20 total blocks there in the downtown area. That data is from 2025, early twenty twenty five.
Seth Johnson:So looking through it, you know, there have been some changes in those vacancies and active businesses.
Lillian Hamman:And one vacancy recently got filled with Kushi&Co. A new Japanese street food, fast casual restaurant right at Bo Diddley Plaza.
Seth Johnson:Yeah. It's been empty for a couple years, but I remember going to the old Munecas that was there and getting some lunch between meetings downtown. It was really convenient. I'm glad there's something else to fill that spot there. You sat down with the owner.
Seth Johnson:Tell us about it.
Lillian Hamman:Yeah. I did. And that convenience is exactly what they're looking for. Just walk up and grab some traditional Japanese street food, which the word kushi in the name of the restaurant literally means skewer. So the main feature on Kushi&Co.'s menu is yakitori, which is a special type of Japanese skewer.
Lillian Hamman:I did get to sit down with the head chef, Charlie Keller. He was the founding chef at Hotel Elio and was the executive chef at Spurrier's Gridiron Grille for a couple years before now coming to Kushi & Co. So everything on the menu is gluten free, homemade, made in house. Some of the meats are marinated for eight hours, and they have you know, their sauces have 28 different ingredients in them. So they definitely aim to be approachable, fast casual.
Lillian Hamman:They said they're marketed below average prices, wanting to reach all kinds of demographics in the community. And I got to try it, and I would give it two thumbs up.
Seth Johnson:Lillian's stamp of approval.
Lillian Hamman:Yeah.
Seth Johnson:Alright. We're gonna take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, Forest Meadows, before coming back with our news forecast segment and event segment. Stay tuned.
Sponsor:At Forest Meadows, our commitment is simple. Exceptional care, personal attention, and respect for every family we serve. Forest Meadows offers every option in one trusted place. Visit our beautiful gardens and glass front niches, or plan ahead for cremation, funerals, and memorials at our funeral home or tribute center located on our cemetery grounds. Forest Meadows, where compassion meets experience, and every life is honored with care.
Seth Johnson:Now for this week's news forecast. The school board of Alachua County will hold a Wednesday workshop at 10AM. The workshop called Building Momentum will discuss district wide instructional alignment.
Seth Johnson:The Greater Gainesville Chamber of Commerce will cut the ribbon on x golf at Celebration Point on Thursday. The business features indoor golf simulators.
Seth Johnson:The League of Women Voters of Alachua County will host a candidate forum for the upcoming City of Alachua elections. The forum will be on Saturday at the Alachua Branch Library starting at noon.
Lillian Hamman:Now for our event segment covering upcoming family friendly events this weekend. Alachua Conservation Trust will host a free pancakes on the prairie breakfast at the Tuscaloolla Prairie Cabin at 9AM on Saturday. Pancakes and coffee will be available while supplies last with vegan and gluten free options.
Lillian Hamman:The tenth annual Heartwood Music Festival is coming to Heartwood Soundstage on Saturday and Sunday.
Lillian Hamman:And there's plenty of opportunities to celebrate the Easter holiday coming up on Sunday, starting with the performance of Mozart's Requiem at 06:30PM on Wednesday at Queen of Peace Catholic Church.
Lillian Hamman:On Saturday, Butler Plaza invites customers to find hidden eggs in store windows, and Newberry will host an Easter egg hunt and spring festival at the Easton Newberry Sports Complex. The city of Alachua will also have an egg hunt at 10AM on Sunday with a special visit from the Easter bunny.
Seth Johnson:I was quite the Easter egg finding fiend back in my day. I could spot those things from a mile away. How about you, Lillian?
Lillian Hamman:I also could put up a fight for most Easter eggs found.
Seth Johnson:Oh, boy. It sounds like a competition brewing.
Lillian Hamman:Yeah. And we would always die real eggs. And unfortunately, we did not find one one year. But then when we moved a couple years later, there was a rotten egg in the corner of the room.
Seth Johnson:You probably smelled it eventually. Yeah.
Lillian Hamman:I think so.
Seth Johnson:Alright. And that's all we've got for this week's StreetSmart podcast brought to you by Mainstreet Daily News and made possible by our generous members. Another special thanks to Forest Meadows for believing in local news and sponsoring us. We'll be back next week to roundup more local news that matters to you. Please share StreetSmart to help us continue the work.
Seth Johnson:Remember to click on the link in the show notes to find more free local news at mainstreetdailynews.com or pick up a prank copy around Alachua County. Our theme music is "Sunset Sonata" by Gainesville ska band, Now Leaving Space. This episode is a production of MARC Media.
