Alachua County/City of Gainesville Joint Commission Meeting - Jun 08, 2026

Hi everybody. I'd like to go ahead and call this joint meeting to order. Welcome everybody. This is a joint meeting of the County Commission and the City Commission. I know Mr. Chuck Chestnut will be here shortly and I know some folks from the city will be arriving. We have a very full agenda. Before we get to on our side, Commissioner, we've got number two state property tax ballot initiative. I know the city is talking about that on Thursday. We're actually talking about that on Tuesday. So I would ask that we strike that item. We've got a real full item on Southeast Neighborhood Enhancements. The mayor and I have talked about trying to get to that item by 1.30 so that we can spend the bulk of our meeting talking about that item. So that's kind of our goal. I've got to leave for a Children's Trust meeting at a few minutes before 4. So if I have to leave, our Vice Chair, Anna, will take over the meeting from there. And with that, I will go ahead and take a motion on our side to adopt the agenda. So moved. With the change of taking out. With that change of item D2 being described. Thank you. Any further discussion? Any public discussion to the motion? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. May you oppose that motion to the end. Mr. Mayor, welcome. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If we could get a motion similar to the counties. I'll make a motion similar to the counties. I accept it similar to the counties. I like that motion. Any public comment? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. That passes unanimously. The commissioners Duck and Walker and Eastman absent. Okay. So we have done our welcome, our introduction. Actually, for the introduction, I'll just say it is a pleasure to have so many folks here interested in these items. We like to have these joint meetings at this table because it's more of a workshop, more collaborative kind of exercise. I said at Memorial Day that I can't remember in my 12 years the relationship between the city and the county being as strong as it's been. And I attribute that to really the city staff and county staff. And I like most of all of y'all, actually. Hopefully some of you like me. Did you say most of us? Most of all of y'all. Most of all of you. I know. I love everybody. Anyone in particular you want to point out? Thank you. All right. Mr. Mayor, I've done enough. All right. Yes, absolutely, 100%. These are good commissions to work with and a great team to support us. So let's, if we're good, let's move on into the Sister Cities item. We want to, I want to introduce former Gainesville Mayor, Lauren Poe, who runs the Gainesville, Greater Gainesville International Center, to make some introductions and run through the quick presentation for us. So, Lauren, you can come to the table or the podium if you'd like, whatever, whatever's best. Good. All right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Chair, old friends. Good to see you again. It's been a while for some of you. Very good to be back. I'm Lauren Poe. I'm President and CEO of the Greater Gainesville International Center. And one of the things that our organization does is administer our Sister Cities programs for the city of Gainesville. There are now a dozen Sister Cities located on four different continents. We've had a very active year already. We welcomed a delegation from San Jose do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the third time a few months ago. About a month ago, we had a delegation of entrepreneurs and government leaders from Kyrgyzstan. And now we're welcoming the mayor of our sister city, Nizhyn, Ukraine, for their first visit to Gainesville, along with his wife. And so I'll introduce them in just one moment. The Gainesville-Nizhyn partnership is one of our newest partnerships. The documents were signed and made official on October 31st of 2024. There has been a tremendous amount of activity within the relationship since that point, much in due to the incredible work by the Ukraine Rebuilding Initiative, which is a student organization on UF campus that works with several professors and a bunch of students that have a very ambitious vision and have been executing their plan incredibly well. With Mayor Cadola's visit here, this is the first official visit of either mayor to either city. And so this is really an exploratory visit, and we're trying to figure out what areas make the most sense for our two communities to work on that will engender a more peaceful and prosperous community and lead to opportunities for both sides. And so with that, I'm incredibly honored to have with us today Mayor Cadola and his wife Vera that have traveled a long way to be with us and will only be with us until tomorrow afternoon. And if you would like a little bit more informal conversation with the mayor and his wife, please join us at Cypress and Grove tonight at 6. We will be there for a while, and you can come say hello. With that, Mayor Cadola, please introduce yourself, and he's got a wonderful presentation as well to share with you about his city of Nizhen, Ukraine. Yeah. Thank you very much. Does it work? Yeah. Thank you, Warren. Dear Mr. Mayor, dear members of Hainesville City and County Commission, dear friends, thank you for the opportunity to address you today. It is truly a pleasure to be with you today. On behalf of the people of Nizhen, on behalf of the Ukrainians and our entire community, I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the city of Hainesville, the University of Florida, the Ukrainian rebuilding initiative, and everyone who has invested their time, energy, talents, and friendship in supporting Ukraine and our city. Today, Ukraine continues its fight for freedom, democracy, and future. And during time, like this, every act of solidarity matters. But what makes your support special is where it goes far beyond words. It has become real projects, real opportunities, real friendships, and a real impact on people's lives. The story of this partnership began in 2023 during my visit to the United States. That was when I first met Mikhail Mikhailov, this is the student of the University of Florida, at the State Department, and the team that would later become the Ukrainian rebuilding initiative. These girls are here with us. Yeah, thank you very much. At that time, we were discussing ideas. Today, those ideas have become reality. What started as a student initiative had grown into remarkable partnership connections to cities. Two universities, and two countless people on both sides of the Atlantic. One of the things I admire most about this partnership is what it was not created by governments alone. It was created by people, students, professors, researchers, volunteers, community leaders. People who believed they could make a difference. And they did. It is especially meaningful that this cooperation eventually led to the official sister city partnership between Nizhen and Gainesville. That began as a conversation became a commitment. And what began as a commitment is becoming a lasting friendship between our communities. So I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Mayor Harvey Ward and his team for their strong commitment to strengthening the relationship between our cities. Harvey, thank you for your friendship, your leadership, and your belief that local communities can play an important role in building international understanding and cooperation. I would also like to recognize former mayor, Lauren Paul. Where is Lauren? Lauren, from the very beginning, you believed in the potential of this partnership. Your leadership, your personal commitment, and the tremendous effort you invested in bringing our communities together have helped make this visit possible. Thank you not only for helping organize this program, but for beginning such a dedicated friends on Nizhen and Ukraine. Today we see the result of partnership everywhere. For example, students from Nizhen and the University of Florida are learning from one another, sharing experiences, practicing languages, and building friendships that may last a lifetime. Our schools are creating new opportunities for young people, researchers and educators are exploring ways to work together, and local leaders are building connections that will benefit our communities for years to come. One example stands out in particular. Through the efforts of the Ukrainian Rebuild Initiative and its partners, Nizhen's water utility received a new energy efficient pump for a water pumping station. Now I know that the water pump may not sound very exciting, but for a city at work, reliable infrastructure matters. For our residents, it means better services, greater resilience and confidence that essential systems will continue to function where I need most. That is what meaningful partnerships look like. Another example that deeply touched us was a project developed by engineers and students from the University of Florida. These students spent their time and talent designed a protective bus shelter for our city. Imagine that for a moment young people thousands of miles away were thinking about how to help keep the people of Nizhen safe. Whether or not every idea becomes reality immediately is not the most important thing. What matters is that we care enough to try. We are also proud of the growing cooperation between Nizhen and Gogol State University in my city, our city of Iceland and the University of Florida. And I would like to recognize Professor Pablo Antoninco, a proud native of Nizhen who has built an impressive career here in the United States while continuing to support his hometown, Nizhen, and create opportunities for future generations. Last year, students from Nizhen traveled to Florida. Last year, students from Nizhen traveled to Florida. They worked alongside American students. They presented innovative projects. They visited laboratories, universities, and STEM centers here. For young people growing up during wartime, this experience was life-changing. It showed them that their future is bigger than the challenges they face today. Today, I would like to offer special thanks to Mikhail Mikhail. This is a student, a student from your Florida University. Mikhail's vision, energy, and determination helped turn an idea into action. What began as a student initiative have become a partnership connection cities. University students, researchers, and communities. Of course, I would also like to thank Elizabeth Kemp, really Yarmovich, Artiemi Goro, Anthony Kerrer, Ivan Perivoruchov, and every member and supporter of the Ukrainian Rebuild Initiative. You have shown that students can do far more than study problems. They can help solve them. Partnerships do not happen by themselves. They happen because people choose to invest their time, their energy, and their hearts. Today, we celebrate exactly that kind of leadership. So, dear friends, perhaps the most important thing you have given us is not equipment. Not projects, not funding. It is hope. Hope that people who live thousands of miles apart can still stand together. Hope that friendship can cross oceans. And hope that even during difficult times, we are not alone. Because rebuilding Ukraine is not only rebuilding buildings. It is about rebuilding connections, rebuilding trust, rebuilding opportunities, and rebuilding faith in the future. So, dear friends, on behalf of the people of Nizhen, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for friendship. Thank you for your support. And thank you for believing in Ukraine. The people of Nizhen will never forget it. The distance between Gainesville and Nizhen is more than 5,000 miles. But thanks to people like you tonight, today, it feels much shorter. Thank you. Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the United States of America. God bless America. And now I have a small presentation about my city. So, please look on the screen. The population of Nizhen is near 70,000 people. This is the map of my city, Nizhen. This is the second largest city in Chernigiv region. It is situated in the northern part of Ukraine. Unfortunately, we have two neighbors. This is Russia and Belarus, both terrorist countries. Nizhen is not far from Kyiv, from the capital of Ukraine, 126 kilometers. This is some about history of Nizhen. Nizhen is an ancient city, dating back to the times of Kyivras. Nizhen has more than 1,000 years history. This is one of the most ancient cities in Ukraine. In the 17th century, Nizhen was granted Magdeburg rights, which made it a free European city. The university played a key role in the development of the city. This is the main building of our university. The university was founded in 1820 and was called the Nizhen Gymnasium of Higher Sciences. Nizhen nowadays, today, Nizhen remains a pro-European city, which implements reforms that will allow us to get right of the remnants of the totalitarian past ones and all. Nizhen fully shares European values and three streams for modern European standards. This is about our economy, how many manufacturers and entrepreneurs. This is priorities of our city council for this year. Medicine, shelters, of course, security, energy saving, other biggest enterprises. Chernigiv region and my city is an agricultural region. So, there are a lot of different agricultural companies, like the sunflower oil processing plant, one of the biggest plant in Ukraine. Nizhen Elevator, Green Alliance Company, this is Sweden investments. Also, our famous, the Kent Food Factory, Nizhen Cucumbers and other companies. About tourism, there are more than 17 churches and cathedrals in our cities. Monuments of history, this is a picture of our famous churches in my city. You can see, for example, St. Nicholas Cathedral, the 17th century. Our museums, there are a lot of interesting museums in Nizhen. Museum of rare books, a museum complex of Nizhen State University. This is a picture of our nature, our river, our lakes. This is about our festivals. Unfortunately, these festivals were before the war. There is a very interesting Nizhen drama theater. This is like a regional theater located in Nizhen and my city. About education, there are 17 kindergartens, 15 schools, two classrooms, professional colleges and two higher education institutions in my city. Agricultural Institute, and Nizhen State University. About sports, we have world champion from Nizhen, boxer Petro Ivanov. And ultra-Olympic champion, judaist Natalia Chistekova. This is a picture of our urban space development, our public spaces. This is Nizhen in the winter, our Christmas tree. In Ukraine, you know, there are four seasons. So, there are a lot of snow in the winter. This is information about the war. Unfortunately, on February 24th, 2022, the progress of our city was hindered by a full-scale military invasion of the Russian Federation. And during the first hours of the invasion of the special aviation unit of the State Emergency Service, the local airfield in Nizhen was destroyed. There is a very big airport located in my city. And in the first five hours, five people were killed by Russian missiles and drones. And this is the results of the first two months, February and March of 2022, when Russian occupants wanted to occupy our territory. But we are proud that we didn't let Russian occupants in my city. But 25 multi-story buildings, more than 60 private buildings, two schools, kindergarten, boiler rooms, a city cemetery have been ruined or damaged for these two months. Thanks to the armed forces of Ukraine, current people of Nizhen repelled, the invaders prevented the enemy from attacking our city and advancing to the capital of our state, Kyiv. This is small video also in this presentation. This is my first speech on the third day of full-scale invasion. Speech for community. This is the modern monument and the area of our killed heroes in our city. This is about support of our city from our partners, from different countries, from our sister cities. We are grateful for partners to support Ukraine. This is information about our sister cities. We have 15 sister cities abroad. Two in the United States of America. This is Gainesville State College in Pennsylvania State. And 13 sister cities in Europe. On this picture you can see our signed partnership one and a half years ago. Yeah. And down this is my visit to State College three years ago. And on this picture, this is a meeting with Anthony Blinken, former secretary, on the American Congress of Mayors in American cities three years ago in Denver. This is a map of our partnership with different countries, different regions. This is information about our partnership with different international partners, different international organizations from different countries. At the end, thank you one more for your support you provide to Ukraine, to Ukrainians. It is very important for us. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Let's go further. It's probably a good angle if somebody wants to shoot from down there. Come down here with us. Can you guys come on? Yeah. That way? Yeah. We can shoot this way, I think. Yeah. Do you all want to move in? Yeah. Come on with us, girls. Excuse me. Please, please. Would you like to get in the picture? Yeah. All right. Give them a round of applause. Yeah. Do you want to like it? Chair, may I say something more quickly? Yeah, please. Lauren, thank you very much for doing this. If you remember four years ago when this conflict started, we had Ukrainian community here who were concerned that we were supporting the wrong folks for the people that were here. So I appreciate you bringing it. I can't wait to get on the phone. I didn't realize that we had this coming or I could have alerted the Ukrainian community that's here. They're working in the community. They're aware. They are aware. They are aware. They are aware. I don't know. We had a bunch last night who did not know. I mean, I would just have dinner with them last night and we, the conversation came up, but we did not know. And so I will make sure that that group knows as well. There's chemists in the community working here out in the area. So as a matter of fact, the family I was with is a group that my husband and I sponsored for citizenship a few years ago. So I know quite a bit. And thank you for doing this because it was important to me at the time as well. That's my involvement with that family. All right. Welcome. Thank you. And I'll find you. Yeah, this was a kind of a last minute ad, an opportunity that the mayor had. And so certainly puts a lot of what we're talking about in perspective. And we really appreciate you being here. So let's do some agenda management and move item four up. We'll swap four and three. We are going to need to make sure that we have a city quorum still for item three. But I know some folks need to leave earlier. So if I don't hear any objection, we'll move the Southeast neighborhood enhancements and economic development up. And Hogtown video will fare down one. Okay. Sounds great. And I know this is kind of a joint presentation. Some of these are county things. Some are city things. And some are both. First is the county. Yeah. This is the county. East Angel Legacy Project update. And we've got Raulston doing that one. Okay. Raulston, thank you for being here. You are right. This is a small gift for you. Okay. Go ahead, Raulston. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm Raulston Riodeca, Alachua County Community Support Services with the Housing and Strategic Development Division. So what we have here is just an update regarding the East Gainesville Legacy Project. So going back to a little bit of context. So going back to August of 2023, the county commission directed county staff to work with the City of Gainesville and the CRA to hold community engagement meetings to figure out what the committee would like to see at that parcel, the county-owned land that's about 13 acres, and to really look at other innovative housing solutions to bring workforce housing to that site. And so the county staff team led by community support services worked with several different departments throughout the county and also city staff. And so we held two community meetings in early January 2024 to get ideas and feedback from community members. And so really what came out of that, of those meetings, was the committee wanting to get, you know, workforce housing and market rate housing, you know, to really have home ownership at that site. And so that's obviously, you know, home ownership builds equity and generational wealth. And also looking, having staff to look into the possibility of using infrastructure surtax money for economic development to create more workforce housing. And so then in May 2024, the county commission directed staff to look into different solicitations to do workforce and market rate single-family homes on the 13-acre site. This is the site map of the, you know, proposed development near Hartwood. And so the county did issue a request for proposals, you know, to develop workforce homes and market rate homes. And we did receive four proposals and, but those four proposals did not meet the county objectives. And so they were non-responsive. And so the county commission directed staff to come back to work again collaboratively with all the departments to come up to refine the scope really, and to make sure that the request targets the county's objectives, right? Again, to develop workforce and market rate homes for home ownership. And so county staff, again, worked with the procurement department and brought back proposal to the county commission to have a grant application process, right? Because again, we're looking at a county-owned land, a 13-acre site. And so the county, we did issue a request for grant applications in early February of this year. We did receive two applications that are currently under review by staff. And we're also concurrently looking at funding opportunities. Obviously, the finance is, you know, the developer applicant is responsible, right, for complete financing. But we're always looking at other funding opportunities to make sure that the project is, you know, financially feasible and to make sure that we get homes that the committee wants. And so we do plan to go to the county commission later this month to present those proposals and other updates and receive further direction. Any questions? That one didn't take long. Let's go on the 15th Street in the Kincaid Loop. Thank you, Ralston. And this is another county initiative with a recent update from Corp last week. And Mr. Gavarette, this one's yours. Good afternoon, commissioners, Mr. Chairs. I'm Ramon Gavarette, public works director for the county. This is very timely because just last week the board did approve a revision to our transportation capital program where we actually moved forward. All the roles are on the Kincaid Loop to be done at the same time the Kincaid Loop was going to be done. The Kincaid Loop did get delayed due to trying to accommodate some of the requests of the neighborhood. Now, when we had the neighborhood meetings, there was something called scope creep in the project. But we were able to actually allocate enough funding. I feel so short. But we were able to accommodate the funding. But to accommodate the budget now when we did the revised TCIP. So what you see here is a map of basically the roads that are involved also with the Kincaid Loop. There is a lot of what's called RFBs, which is rectangular refractorized flashing beacons, RFBs, for the crossings. One thing that we are planning to do is because some of these roadways, for example, Southeast 15th from about Southeast 14th Avenue all the way to 41st is very wide. And people tend to speed when there's nothing visually that tells them to slow down. And physically, not just visually, but also physically. I always tell folks, I can go close 10 miles per hour on every road. And people are still going to go 60 miles per hour or more. So we're intentionally going to try to choke them. We're going to actually do curb and gutter sections. Establish to try to give the impression this is not a speedway. We're going to go down to probably 10 or 11 foot lanes instead of 12 foot lanes that are there right now. We're also going to do race crosswalks. I'm not going to say we're going to do it at all those blue dots, because that'll be a lot. But we are going to do some race crosswalks in prestigious locations to actually, again, once again, to slow down traffic. If you have to do something physically to the road, striping doesn't do it all by itself. So we're going to do something physically to the road, like race crosswalks, choking the traffic a little bit to try to slow down the speeds. So that in a nutshell is what we're doing in all these roads. And once again, the plan is to go out to bid probably summer slash fall of 2027, because the design is being redone by in-house by my own engineers. We're bringing the design back in-house instead of a consultant. And that way we have more control over the design. And then construction will be put out all together, broadways and the Kinke loop at the same time. The way it was in the original plan, the Kinke loop was first, and then one road was next, and then the other road was next, and that didn't make sense to me. So we brought them all at one time. That way we impact the traffic in the neighborhood one time only instead of three or four times over the years. So that's really the report that I have. So if you have any comments or any questions, I'm here to listen. Sure. So, Commissioner, as we heard from the community, we listened to you all, and this is one of two roads that the county has moved up in its plan, and we want to share that with you. So questions for- Most importantly, 15th. That's right. Absolutely. Commissioner Willis. At 15th and I think it's 22nd, Southeast 22nd, it's a weird little intersection, and I just didn't know whether, if there were any safety improvements there or from the city side. It's in the city, I think. And I think 22nd is the city road, the one that merges with the weird- Does the weird- Has the slippery- So it turns, it goes up to the sanitary. Yeah. Yeah. And so I just didn't know whether that, I know that's a place where, I don't know about crash data. I know it feels very unsafe every time I'm on it. I'm very careful on it. So I just didn't know if there was anything special about that particular intersection. I really cannot speak to that right now. I can tell you that we are looking at all, looking at crash reports, problems. I work with Brian, if we have to. I'm sure, I know he has a lot of money, so I'm sure he can actually put some money into the project. But no, we're gonna, we haven't even started the design work on this project. So right now is the time to bring up these concerns so that my staff, that I'm sure is listening, Stuart, we can put that down and actually make sure that we look at that. I'm sure it came up in the neighborhood meetings as well. But it may be also something that the drivers feel more so than the neighbors, the people who are cutting through. You mean the drivers are going eight miles per hour? Well, I think more importantly, they're slowing down very rapidly if they're headed south. Well, the plan is to try to slow them down the entire railway, not just that intersection. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair. Just something, Mr. President. Thank you. On 15th, have you considered putting in, what are they called, the traffic blinkers? Those are the RFPs. That's what? That's what the RFPs are, they're reflectorized. That's the race? Yeah. Back on 8th Avenue? Yes. Thank you. There's several. See all those blue dots in the map? Those are all off. Yeah, because of the school traffic and, yeah. We're going to have a Christmas tree there. Well, we appreciate it. I just want to say thank you for hearing us. I know this has been one of those, a bit of a squeaky wheel project between the community and us just being like, why can't we do it all together? Why can't we do it at the same time? Why can't we do it all together? So I appreciate you all hearing us and I think it's going to be a much improved space, having both done at the same time, because the people who are feeling like they want to start using this new amazing multi-use trail will have the safety enhancements of the paving across the roads and the reflective beacons and the crosswalks. So thank you so much. You're welcome. And a nice roadway down to Bulwer Springs, which the city is spending a lot of resources on as well. Okay, Ramon, any other questions? I just wanted to thank you all for moving this forward. This is a big deal. It will absolutely keep people safer and save lives, and it will make it a more pleasant road to drive, which has a ripple effect on all the neighborhoods that Southeast 15th Street affects. So thank you. I did want to just say there's a couple of little side spikes on this road, a couple that are very short that are still unpaved. I just want to bring that up. As you look at the design, I know that dust has been a complaint of several of the neighbors on a few of those roadways. And they're like, you know, little, they're right near that 22nd intersection, actually. It's where some of the farms are. So I just, I know it may not be in the budget, but I just want to point it out as we're looking at the project, if we can look at those few little side spikes on the left-hand side of the road if you're going south. So I just have something to think about. You have memorial streets in the county on Southeast 8th and 15th. Not 15th, but at that intersection. We're naming it Bishop James McKnight, Senior. Oh. You know, Bishop McKnight was at Church of God by Faith about 60 years. So is there a process we could? Yes, to actually put memorial names on roads. Currently, that's being handed through Ms. Gina Peoples. But there is a process that I'm sure Gina is probably listening to. I'll ask her just to send you the information. It's just some information, and then we'll move forward with the marker. Thank you very much. Okay. Commissioner Buck. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah. So when government organizations prioritize roads, as you're right, there's always more roads than there are money, but this particular road has a tremendous amount of neighborhoods, and it's a through way for a large corridor. So many of the roads may connect to a specific neighborhood and then and there, but this one has the capacity to benefit a tremendous amount of people in that corridor. So I think you prioritize correctly, and I also appreciate you all moving it up in your overall plan. So thank you for that. Very much appreciate it. Mr. Chair, thank you also for moving up 83rd Street, because I get calls three or four times a week about why the city hasn't done something about that street in front of Santa County. You are very welcome, and that was also another easy, easy one for our staff and our commission to kind of reconsider, and I'm glad that women was able to do that. Okay, Mr. Gaberete, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. Okay, next up is the UF Eastside Urgent Care Center update. Welcome. Welcome. In quite some time, I think, since we opened the urgent care, I'm Melanie Blackburn. I'm the Director of Community Health and Family Medicine at UF. First and foremost, I want to take an opportunity to introduce our new practice manager. I think some of you got the opportunity to work with Miss Toni Wilson. She has moved on to exciting new adventures, and so we are fortunate to have Elvis Gomez. He is the new practice manager at the urgent care site. I do have a little slide here that will tell you a little bit more about Elvis, but he comes to us from within the UFP, UF Health System. Historically, he's been with pediatrics, so we're excited to bring that specialization into the urgent care setting as well. We wanted to give you all a quick update in regards to the total number of visits that we've seen since the site launched back in, goodness, almost two years ago now, so August of 2024. So here you can see a graph by month, but in total, we are just under about 14,000 visits. We also wanted to give you all a little summary of kind of the patient demographics, the payer mix and specifics that we're seeing in regards to the population there. This is a snapshot from August to May of 2026. And so we can see here predominantly female and gender. And sorry, these are a little blurry. So I think you guys might get copies of this as well. Okay, great. And then also we've got race and age. Pair mix is one that we've actually been a bit surprised by about 30. Thank you so much. About 30% is Blue Cross Blue Shield. And actually we're seeing about 10% self pay. So I think at least from our perspective, that's significantly lower than what we initially anticipated for that particular site. This is also some additional information in regards to visits or also keeping eyes on ED admissions and trying to, I know one of the goals of this site was to try to reduce ED utilization. It's a bit tricky to truly tie the two of those together, right, in terms of how much one is correlating to the other. But we are tracking that data to see how many times we're admitting same day from the urgent care to the ED. And we'll continue to keep eyes on that. We're also tracking the average visit by age, check in times, we look at it by region, as well as the average visits per region. So we're trying to really get an understanding of where the different patients coming from in terms of location. We also wanted to give you all a snapshot of kind of some of the primary diagnoses that we're seeing. So other general symptoms is going to be the predominant one here. Obviously a lot can fall into that. But then you can also see we get a lot of acute cough. There's a huge list here I'll let you guys kind of look through and obviously this doesn't capture everything but it gives you an idea of some of the most common symptoms and diagnoses that we're seeing. And then average wait time in minutes. So we're at about 24, I mean it goes up and down, right? But we were at about 24 minutes in May. We did see spikes during flu season, but we were able to, we've made the decision going into next year, we need to step up, similar to what we do in the EDs. So we will make sure to have additional providers on hand come next flu season. And then obviously the average turnaround time is something that we track. check in times by the day of the week. And then we're trying to keep track of how many of our patients have PCPs, especially to determine if they're within a family medicine or within the UF health system so that we can help to establish PCPs for those patients who are in need. So switching gears a little bit, one of the extensions of this site that we were super excited about was expanding it to include primary care. So again, going back to the primary slide where we were talking about PCP establishment, we recognized very quickly that a lot of the patients that were presenting to the urgent care were seeking true primary care assistance. They just didn't have that primary care established. So we thought, hey, let's go ahead and put primary care. We have the room to do it. So now when you walk into the center, we've got two different suites. One is the urgent care and one is truly primary care. We've already launched our first physician, Dr. Covey. She was one of our residents. And then we have our second provider, Dr. August, who is going to be coming in August. So we'll have two physicians fully staffed and they can see up to 16 patients per day for each of them. Let me pause you for a moment. With the primary care added here, how will that impact the Eastside Clinic down on Wallsville Road? That's a great question. So that's one of the things that we're trying to keep eyes on. One of the advantages that the Eastside Clinic has is that we truly have dedicated pediatrician physicians at that site. So we're trying to continue to drive care for all ages to that particular site. We're also working with them to drive up. Right now we have access issues at all of our sites. So we're not super concerned that it's going to pull from one to support the other, but we're keeping eyes on that. On the previous side, you had hours. One of the big conversations we had early on with regards to the center was hours of operation. There was interest in later hours and earlier hours. Like it looks like people really are pushing into those earlier hours of the day. I'm wondering if there has been thought of you guys adjusting your hours. There has. Yes, ma'am. So we do find that when we open the doors at 10 a.m. There's typically a line of people waiting. One of the things that we wanted to gauge with primary care now being there, and we launched that in March, I believe. We wanted to get an idea of how many patients were going to show up at 8 o'clock thinking that the urgent care was open when it was truly just the primary care side. So we're starting to see a little bit of that. And so that's already long conversation about extending the urgent care hours. We've already got check-in staff there. We've already got nurses there. So it makes sense to just try and staff up those physicians to be able to accommodate the urgent care opening simultaneously at 8 o'clock. So the physician staffing has been the challenge, as you might imagine. On that same page, I expected your Saturday and Sunday numbers to be much higher. So it shows that while it is an urgent care center, people seem to be planning for their health care. How urgent it is. How urgent it is. Much better. Yes. And you'd actually be surprised. So before I came to family medicine, most of my experience was in the emergency department. And we saw the same patterns even in the ED, which was even more alarming, right? That like an emergent issue could somehow wait till Monday. And we see that same pattern when it comes to holidays as well. You'll see a big ramp up going into like a holiday weekend, and then it'll trickle down and then people will come back on Monday. So we're actually evaluating the holiday staffing schedule right now to try and truly figure out how much of a demand there is on those holiday days. But the weekend, surely, and we did, well, not recently, but we extended the Sunday hours to align with Saturday. So now it's 10 to 4 Saturday and Sunday. We were initially 10 to 2 on Sunday. So we did feel like we needed that extra two hours. But I don't know that there's much of a demand to go past. Yeah, probably not. Yeah. Well, we're just very proud of the Sunday. Yeah, it's been doing great. When we get to the end of the presentation, we'll get to the end. The last thing we were kind of asked to speak on was recommendations and strategic opportunities. These are certainly from our paradigm, so I anticipate you all might have additional suggestions as well. But we are focusing on strengthening the primary care integration and access. Again, with rolling out that primary care site, one of our goals is to be able to create that pipeline for patients who don't have primary care so that they can truly utilize that mechanism versus using the urgent care center for things that can be more of a primary care relationship. We also want to expand preventative screening initiatives. So this is specifically on the east side of town in general. So our east side clinic as well. Launching more screenings related to social determinants of health or SDOH, depression screening. Utilizing our social workers to be able to truly partner with those folks who need some additional support there and identifying those factors early on. We also are in the process of implementing walk-in laboratory services. So this is on my desk right now to get the phlebotomist request submitted for approval to be able to have walk-in laboratory for the east side community at this site. And then we also want to continue advancing community education and navigation. Again, this is just continuing to educate the community as a whole in regards to urgent versus emergent versus primary care. The more that we can do that and truly try to get people going to the direct clinical site, the better up we are. And I think we do see quite a few patients that will show up for more emergent conditions just because of the proximity piece, right? They just want to be in front of the physician, someone who can take care of them, and then we're immediately transferring them to the ER. So we will continue to be a resource for that the best we can, but recognize that that's going to continue to be a little bit of a challenge. Yeah, I guess I just had like a sort of a question and a comment or a comment and a question on the preventative care screening initiatives. I'm excited to see the focus in that area. I think it's really critical. So often I think issues of medical conditions come, you know, as a result of ongoing issues related to access to food or quality housing or other things. But I will say that I guess my question and comment is I'm interested in how the county and or the city, but definitely the county can collaborate with you in terms of those that screening data and the referral process that you're doing with find help. We are looking at the ways in which we can do a better job of tracking the data in our community about the needs, where they're coming from, who they're being referred to, how those needs are getting met so that we can have a better closed loop referral system. And I think collaboration with UF Health on that and being able to have access to that data so we can understand the gaps in services and understand which organizations are bearing the brunt of all those referrals that are going to start coming as you guys do better job screening. That's going to put a lot of pressure on a lot of our community nonprofits and private organizations that provide those services. And so just want to, you know, especially as we see cuts at the federal level and now potentially the state level in terms of services for health care. I think we're going to quickly see kind of how overwhelmed our local organizations are going to be in terms of responding to this effort. So I just hope we can stay in touch and think about the ways in which we can collaborate on data sharing initiatives and partnerships on projects that would help to solve some of these upstream challenges. I agree. I think it's going to take a village. We recently went through this because we're partnering with Pastor Duncan. I think you all are very familiar with him and his organization. He has some community health workers that we've been trying to partner. And so part of the challenge is the consenting process and being able to create a workload for that to be able to consent the patients to share their data. And so we're working through that process right now with Helm to be able to hopefully expand that. So I think as soon as we could, we would love to partner with you guys. I think it's going to take all hands on deck to really move the needle on that. Is there a particular, I guess after the meeting, there's a particular individual or somebody we should be coordinating with as our staff are thinking about how we do those things. That would be great. And I would say thank you to the work that you all are doing already on referring the food as medicine patients and thinking about those collaborations. I think figuring out how we can build for them is the next step so that we can actually afford the food. Because to that end, if we can actually find ways to build for those support services, the food, the health care, the dietitians that are outside of the community providing that support, the more we'll be able to all continue that process going. Thank you. Commissioner. Commissioner Alpert. Thank you. I'm really intrigued by the primary care being adjacent to the urgent care. And I'm curious how that works when a patient walks in. Are they triaged and then sent in one direction or the other? Or do people come in only for primary care separately? They come in separately. So we don't have the ability for the patient to present to the site for us to determine if they need to go primary care or urgent care. So if they come and they present to the urgent care side and we determine that they do not have an established PCP, then we would walk them through the process to help them get established. The great news with us having the new providers on site is they have access right now, right? So we're trying to really encourage people to go ahead and create that establishment to be able to get in before the access gets confined. I guess my reason for asking is that I see that part of I put myself through school working at Chance UF and I saw the emergency room and this huge trend of people going to the emergency room for things that should have been addressed by primary care physicians. So I see this opportunity for sort of educating the public about what the opportunities are with respect to primary care. So I think that's interesting that that's how it's working. Has there been an impact to emergency room statistics in Chance on Archer Road or sorry, UFL on Archer Road? We're trying to figure out if we can accurately reflect on that. That's the part we're saying it's a little sticky, right? Because it's really hard for us to clearly say that, you know, sways in the data are definitively related to the urgent care. There's really no clean way to know for sure what that impact is. That's why we're trying to keep an eye in terms of the admissions that we know that we're sending specifically from the urgent care. And the hope is that we see a decrease there, right? That we start to, again, educate the community to have less people utilizing that site for emergency care. And likewise, how about how do you interact with the health department, which has often, you know, provided health care services in East Council? I'll be honest with you. There's not a whole lot of partnership right now with the health department. So probably an opportunity we could look into. Yeah, I'd like to talk to you about that sometime. Thank you. Commissioner Chessa. Thank you. Are you providing a preventive health education classes or information to the residents in the area? So we do have the community room there. And so that is an open. It's very, very tiny. Is it? It's that big. Community space? Yes. Yes. I think the. It's like the size of this room. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's smaller than this room. It's smaller than this room. It's about half the size. Yeah, you're right. It is. So it gets utilized quite a bit. And there are some educational resources that are happening right here. I know that they do breastfeeding educational courses. I know that there are some like smoking, smoking cessation courses that are happening. There's certainly opportunity, I think, to expand in terms of just general preventative health education for the community. Do you have something? Well, what I'm thinking about diabetes, wound care. Sure. High blood pressure. Yeah. Classes provide us information. Sure. I will say that they have their clinicians. I don't know if they if the ones at the urgent care that are just starting their primary have been doing it. But I know that some of the clinicians within U of Health have been doing referrals to the Food is Medicine program where they're doing education on diet and lifestyle for diabetes, hypertension and heart disease or people who are on that kind of edge of that, like where they're showing high A1C levels or high lipid levels and are kind of like on the cusp. They've been getting referred to that program for support. So there has been some. But I think it's again, it's more referrals into the community for those resources. It is. And those right now are primarily coming from the Eastside Clinic and the Main Street Clinic kind of as the pilot. Some of our other clinics do offer diabetes, hypertension education, things like that. But they haven't quite made their way into the urgent care setting yet. And if I'm being honest, I think it would be probably more of a partnership with the primary care clinic that's now tied to the urgent care versus the urgent care itself. Because I think we want to continue to direct the patients to that PCP preventative care pathway and keep the urgent care as truly urgent care. Thank you. It's a great question. Yeah. I got to believe that once you get more data on the primary care, that will lead to the more opportunities to educate in the community space for some of the things that Commissioner Chesot mentioned. I agree. Okay. Commissioner Willis and Commissioner Wheeler. So you said about the payer mix, something was unexpected. Were you saying they expected a larger portion of self-pay? Is that what I was hearing? We initially did going into it. Okay. We expected it to be higher than 10%. And we certainly didn't expect 30%, 35% to be Blue Cross Blue Shield. So did you expect less on the Blue Cross Blue Shield? We did initially. So just kidding. I mean, I think we're dancing around the net. What this means is that it looks like 50% of people are, that's straight up commercial insurance. I mean, that's straight up private insurance. Exactly. These are just people who have jobs and, you know, and this is convenient. It's in the neighborhood or time or whatever. Yes. Or they feel more comfortable. Okay. That's what I was trying to, and so is there any, is there any changes kind of nationwide in whether self-pay people, are they just not coming to get as much care? You know, inflation, is there, do y'all have anything to tie that into like a larger public health story or is this just what we're experiencing here and this is kind of all the data we have? Yeah. I don't know that there's anything necessarily triggering that we're seeing across like all of our sites. Now, with that being said, this is our only urgent care, right? So we don't necessarily have a good benchmark to tie it to, but not, there's not like an obvious correlation. I think that it's just a new site. And when we went into it, we initially figured there would be way less commercial. And maybe that was an, obviously that was an incorrect assumption, right? But nothing specific that I could think to tie it to. Interesting. We are noticing that there's quite a bit of patients that are coming from the outlying areas, right? So I think people from like the Clay area, it's actually quite a bit closer than going to, you know, Orange Park or whatever, or Gainesville. Yeah. So. I would think down Putnam County down Hawthorne Road would be a lot of that. Yep. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler. And then we'll move. We go to primary care. Will there be a doctor there every day or are they certain days that? So right now, Dr. Covey is there. She's doing four tents because we wanted to offer those kind of non-traditional appointment times. And so she's there Monday to Thursday. And then the second provider that we have that's coming in in August, she's going to be four tents as well, but she will be there on Friday. So she'll be Tuesday to Friday. Great. Great. I see somebody. Have you all been able to stabilize your staff out there? I know in the beginning was a little rocky. It's been challenging. And I'll say the reason it's been challenging. A lot of people go into primary care because they like the Monday to Friday eight to five consistently of the specialty, right? So it's been a little challenging both from the physician side as well as from the staff side, nurses and clerical staff to get people to work later evenings, weekends. With that being said, it works for some. And part of our job is to just make sure we're being transparent with candidates when they're applying that this is a requirement of the position, right? We did recently get approval to staff up because there is a need to ensure that we consistently have double coverage at all times. We've noticed there's call outs, unexpected things, right? We can't be in these situations to where we're frantically trying to get someone to cover that shift. So we were able to get support from the system to be able to provide that additional coverage. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So Commissioner Chestnut was talking about the ability to basically harbor more community education at your site. And I will just tell you, especially since you're new at least for that particular site, that Santa Fe College has a very robust community education class program. Nice. And probably their primary thing that they typically look for is the instructor and a location. So they need the geography to simply put it. And then they end up leveraging that, putting out information and the costs are low. So it just may be an opportunity for you to contact with the directors of the community. Great idea. Good suggestion. I know UF and Santa Fe have many, many great partnerships. Ms. Blackburn, thank you. Can you hang out? We're going to try to cover the Ehedi course at Butwood and then we're going to pause the presentations, give the public a chance to come up and speak to these items and ask questions. And then we'll get back to our agenda items of grocery. Thank you. So feel my hanging out. Yeah. Okay. All right. Let's get through that presentation. And then we're going to ask the public to come up as we get through that. Is that okay, Mr. Mayor? It works for me. Welcome, Mr. Singleton. Lots of engineers at this table today. Yes. Nice to see. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, commissioners. Rick Smith, GCRA. Happy to see you all again. We're going to do kind of a brief overview of major projects in the southeast that supplements what the county has already provided to you all today. We have several projects from other departments, including GCRA, in addition to wild spaces, transportation, and housing. We'll go over the local food efforts and collaborations that GCRA has undertaken during its period of operation since 2019. Here's the cornerstone campus. You can see in yellow the publicly-owned, city-owned properties. We have a little bit of over an acre of vacant land that is abutting southeast Hawthorne Road. The property is zoned U-8 transect zoning, which would bring up to 60 units per acre, potentially four- to six-story buildings. The sites you see here just east of the RTS transit station are two four-acre parcels, which has been the target for the grocery that we'll be talking about a little bit later. It would be nice to see a four- to six-story building, wouldn't it? Yes. I think the original site plan that was done back in 2023 sort of modeled a mini Magnolia Park, and I think it would fit under that type of zoning. You've heard the presentation on detail on the urgent care center. This was built with contributions from the city and the county for both acquisition as well as construction. The urgent care center opened in August 2024. Later that year, it won a Phillips Town Gown Relations Award from the University of Florida. Some things going on at Cornerstone. We launched a food truck concept back in early 2025, carried it through the summer of that year, and restarted in 2026. We're getting about seven trucks on rotation every Thursday, averaging about 40 to 50 folks who come to the campus for that reason. We did release an invitation to negotiate last year. Last year, I will talk about that later. Completed the infrastructure network, as you know, in 2025. We have released and received proposals for real estate services for the Cornerstone Market area. We expect to evaluate the three proposals over the next two or three weeks to determine whether or not we're going to bring them forward to the Commission for action. And finally, we are assessing the viability of a future Cornerstone Market that will support local entrepreneurs. We have had a unsolicited proposal from a local individual who would like to implement in that market. We told them that we're kind of feeling out what's happening with the commissions and the outcome of this meeting. We'll have determined the direction of how we want to go forward with that idea. We're also under construction under GTEC. We were approved by City Commission for a $5.1 million guaranteed maximum price for the renovation of the property. That renovation is beginning this week. We're also undertaking weatherization of the building. That will be completed in July. We're also preparing a GTEC market study and business plan that's going to be completed in summer of 2026 to include additional goals and refine implementation strategies. Some early data indicate that we have a market of 372 businesses within the GCRA zip codes. This is gathered from SunBiz, 104 within the GTEC zip codes, and there are 72 home-based businesses within GTEC's zip code alone. I believe there's probably 3,500 within the county at large. It's our thinking that this would be the market that would be attracted to the configurations that we're going to build within GTEC. There's a schedule for phase one that's going to involve renovation of the second floor. That will take place from June through January of 2027, at which point we're going to move the remaining tenants up to the second floor and begin construction on the first floor, which is going to bring forth the vast majority of the entrepreneur space, incubator spaces, as well as the community center at the western first floor of the building. We expect completion to be done in March 2028 with a ribbon cutting that year. Will the business plan have an estimated cost associated for those businesses that are interested in participating? It will, and we're going to try to leverage some of the collaborations we've had with Santa Fe, SCORE, and other non-profits that provide the networking and training. Commissioner Chesil. Thank you. How is the rental of office space? Pardon me? GTEC, office space. Right now, we're really not trying to rent it out because of the construction. We don't want to bring people in to move them out. We have about 16 or 17 current tenants. We also have four that are ready to move in to the second floor once that's completed. And after the, you know, we began the second phase, we're going to heavily market the bottom spaces. Good afternoon again. Brian Singleton, Chief Operating Officer for the city. This is a rendering of the Eastside RTS station. It just finalized the permitting process. It's in the procurement phase. It will be a 5,000 square foot building with a community room for both training purposes and for meeting reservations in the Eastside. Six bus bays with three canopies, about 62 parking spaces. Cost is about $4.2 million. It's completely funded with federal grants. We should hopefully break ground this October and be done fall of next year. Moving into Wild Spaces Public Places projects, one of the projects the team is currently working on is the design of the Southeast 8th Avenue Trail. It is being completed in-house by the Public Works Department and Wild Spaces Public Places team in the Transportation Department. It will be along the north side of Southeast 8th Avenue from Southeast 15th Street to Hawthorne Road. Next to the Legacy Project, Hartwood, connecting to the Cornerstone and the Eastside Transfer Station. Love that. That's great. Currently we're progressing towards 60% design plans and working with property owners for land rights needs. On to Southeast 15th Street, Boulevard Springs renovation project includes renovating and rehabilitating the spring building to convert it into a public meeting space. New trailhead restrooms, different improvements throughout the site such as lighting, parking, pedestrian circulation, ADA, and then erosion stabilization because we have a lot of sediment buildup out there. We are currently reevaluating the scale and the scope of the project, looking at readjusting the plan starting this fall and hopefully be under construction next fall. The site is very sensitive both environmentally and archeologically, so we just want to make sure that we're not impacting any of those sensitive elements. Is the meeting space going to include a catering kitchen or anything like that? I remember renting the Boulevard Springs facility 20-something years ago and it had a small kitchen. I just didn't know if that was going to be part of the new plan or not. The scope as it sits today does include a catering kitchen, but we are reevaluating the entire scope and scale of the project. It was a really nice space to have events. We currently have about 4.7 million allocated for the job, but we definitely want to make sure we're intentional with that investment and make sure the space is usable and as activated as it possibly could be. It's going to be a busy street in 2027. I love that project. I really love this project. Moving north a little bit on Southeast 15th Street, we are going through the programming phase for TB McPherson. It's got two elements. One is the building renovation and then the 10-year master plan for the site. We have our third public workshop scheduled for tomorrow evening starting at 7 o'clock at TB McPherson. There's currently or there will be 3.5 million allocated for the building renovation and then the site elements would have to be programmed at some point in the future. We are really excited about getting this one going. A lot of good, positive feedback from the community. There's also a lot of interest about Southeast 15th Street whenever we meet with the community and where we're at on that, so we're glad that we got that update today. But again, making the investment into renovating the building first and then programming out different site elements at a later date. I'm moving into housing projects. I don't see Corey in the room, but we... He's here. Corey, you want to speak to these? If you want to do it, I'll let you do it. Welcome, Corey. Good to see you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Chair of the Commission, to all the commissioners. Here's what we have here in the East, the Southeast region. Thank you. Here's what we have in the Southeast region. The city receives funding through a number of sources. State Housing Initiative Partnership or SHIB, CDBG from the federal level, and Federal Home Program. And oftentimes, we utilize a lot of our funding for preservation activities. So here are some of the units that have been preserved in the southeast quadrant of the city. And here are some of the other projects. So in addition to our preservation activity, we also provide subsidy to support the development of affordable housing. And so you can see here, through Connect Free, all the projects have been touched with. Connect Free funding, as well as some additional funding made available by the city commission through our affordable housing development grant program. A million dollars is made available on a competitive process, as well as we leverage some of our SHIB funding to the tune of $650,000. So last year, the city commission made $1.65 million available on a competitive process. And so here's some of the development projects from the southeast corridor that have applied and were awarded those funds. That's especially to draw everyone's attention to a couple of three larger developments. The total replacement and improvement of Woodland Park Phase II, Jesse's Village on southeast 21st Street, which is getting real close to opening, I think. And that's 22 units. And what had been Hawthorne Heights apartment building, rather, for seniors, it's 86 units right next door to Cornerstone. So all of that is happening all at once. So I have a question. They say new rental units, but those were existing units that are being renovated or they're adding units? No, it's a new development project. The Woodland Park Phase II is all new. No, so half of them, roughly about 72, were replacement. And then a remaining portion was new. I see that many units. Thank you for the work you guys are doing. So we have some updates on the Heartwood neighborhood. First, I want to focus on the amenities project, which started in early January. We look to be bringing that to a close in the next week or so. And that would include landscaping, new fencing that's already up, signage, which is being constructed this week, irrigation and the new fencing, as I mentioned, that came in at a guaranteed maximum price of $511,000. We are also continuing negotiations with Bright Community Trust regarding implementation of a community land trust to finish off the last 16 lots. We expect to reach an agreement within this week. The deal is $1.4 million in the land to Bright Community Trust to build the 16 remaining homes, about $88,000 per home. Four homes will be at 80% AMI or less, and 12 homes at 120% AMI. The development and financing agreement has the project completion in September, 2028. So I'll go over some local food initiatives. This is a timeline of East Gainesville grocers. Not comprehensive because Winn-Dixie, I believe, came on to South Main in the 70s and was preceded by Publix on North Main. But nevertheless, this gives you the extent of activity by grocers. Some ones to pay attention to is the Walmart Center opening up on 2008. The food line on Southeast Hawthorne Road, which was originally opened in 1993, closed in 2012. In mid-2021, I'll give you an overview of that proposal. It was Bravo Supermarket was to provide an unsolicited proposal for the old food line site. That eventually went awry and didn't come to fruition. When Dixie closed in 2024 on South Main, Aldi reopened on South Main Street. Let me go over the details of the unsolicited proposal. Now, this was kind of a unique one in that the proposal was for $3 million in funding to renovate the food line. It was from a developer in Jacksonville. It was going to be through a 10-year forgivable loan to renovate the structure, turn into full grocery. The city opened the process to other grocers. There were some concerns raised about the ability of the city to have substantial protection of its investment in it. Eventually, the developer withdrew. The project ended without an anchor tenant in January 2020, and the site has been vacant ever since. And if I might interject just briefly. Everybody keep in mind, the city doesn't own that site. That is a privately owned site. And there's often concern and questions about that. That is not public property. It's privately owned. There's only so much the city or the county can make happen there. We don't own it. Mr. Mayor, is there any way that the community could pressure owners like that who keep business unoccupied? It seems to me that that's kind of a blight on the community to have them there. Generally speaking, my understanding is that the state doesn't give us a lot of tools to be able to do that. But if they ever did, I got a list. I got you. Okay. All right. Thank you. The state is owned by a real estate investment trust in Fort Lauderdale that has, at last count, about 250 other properties throughout the state. Are they functional? Do you know? I don't even know if they realize they still have this property. They've got so much in their portfolio. I think they know. My understanding is that there's been several approaches to that real estate company about opportunities to collaborate on projects like the one that was just presented by others who wanted to have similar vision, and the company has, I think, a delusion, but maybe some others would call it high hopes, of the value of that property. The value that they quoted to the most recent person that I know that approached them about that property was probably about the same price you would pay for the Hitchcock's property on Alachua off of I-75. So, you know, just the level at which they're willing to negotiate in terms of that property's value and what the reality is of what would be needed in terms of investment for the property as well as just the location and the traffic drive to that property is pretty out of whack, unfortunately. So, in 2023 and 2024, GCRA and the city were pretty heavily involved in negotiations with the former owners of the Hitchcock franchise. They had, at the time, 10 stores in their portfolio. So, we got to the point mid-summer where they had developed a site plan and had come in for preliminary review by the Department of Sustainable Development to see if they could match up with the land use requirements of the transect zoning. Unfortunately, the owner of the company passed away in early fall and the family was, for some period of time, obviously in mourning and uncertain as to what they wanted to do with their business. Eventually, in our correspondence and collaboration with their operations manager, we found out that they were going to sell the business off. So, we backed away from continuing negotiations with them. And since the, you know, the 10 stores have been sold off piece by piece, so it's not under any kind of collective ownership. Thank you. Just one more question. Mr. Mayor, we know what the county did at one point when we were trying to get the Walmart on the east side of town was kind of pressure the Walmart to say, well, if you want to build on the west, you need to also build here. I don't know if we could do that with a company, say, like Aldi's, that was trying to expand their business towards the west. You know, if we could do the same thing, if we had that. They did just open on South Main Street. Right. Yeah. South Main. Yeah. All they did open on South Main Street. Yeah. Okay. Yes. But, okay. Well, that's, I guess that's far enough east. Yeah. I guess it is. That's not far. You're right. Never mind. And to be honest, part of the issue with recruiting grocery stores to East Gainesville is the presence of the Walmart Superstore. I mean, it's a huge grocery area and they're very hard to compete with. So that is an issue. It's not the only issue, but it's an issue. Got you. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So in May of 2025, following on our efforts with Hitchcox, we released an invitation to negotiate. The proposals were due at the end of the month in June. We received no responses. We did offer an enticement of financial incentives to an entity that's willing to negotiate with the city. We did not receive any proposals, as I mentioned. Some of our other local efforts, we reached out to wards, did a site visit to talk to the current operator. They have over 90 employees at their current location, and they indicated they were kind of tapped out and they weren't able to expand. We reached out to those other stores there, received no response. We will be sending out a no-bid survey this week to not only grocers, but also the respondents to the ITN, or I should say the ones who opened up the ITN. A lot of them were development companies. Many of them were probably serving as site selectors for grocers as a screen. So we'll be contacting them in hopes of getting better intelligence and information on the viability of a mainstream grocer for the site. We've also been working with county staff on the FarmStop concept that has been percolating in the last six months. Several of our staff did a series of webinars focused on the efforts in Ann Arbor. Can you talk – I guess I'm interested in that because that's not – that model, I think, is a model that might do well in this location. It's not – I forwarded it to, I believe, all of the city commissioners, and I really appreciate the city kind of taking up the charge to actually do that research and look at that model because I think it fills the gap between the big-box stores that can sell the canned goods and the paper towels at such a discount that the local grocer is never going to be able to compete with, but maintains the opportunity for access to fresh, nutritious foods and supports the local food economy by providing a space for farmers to consign their products. But rather than it just being a farmer's market that's open four hours a week, it's open all the time. And the revenues that come in basically cover the cost of the staffing that oversees the checkout. And so imagine, like, the antique consignment shop in Micanopy by the highway, but instead of it being antiques, it's food. Essentially, it's kind of – it's sort of a hybrid between a grocery store and, like, a green grocer or a market that you might – it's a local food market that you might see on the side of the road. And I think these models are starting to pop up a lot more in municipalities and communities around the country because they are pretty successful. And that's sort of a shared risk model where you don't have a lot of major investment. Sometimes there's capital investment up front, of course, and there's the staffing costs, but those are usually covered, you know, the operations costs. So I would love to hear if you all have thought that that might be a good model or if after the research you sort of have left that on pause or – Well, we kind of divided and conquered with county staff. They were going to handle the farm stop research. Okay. We did a little preliminary work on the demographics around some of the farm stops in the Midwest, but we haven't gone any further waiting on the results from the county staff. And that takes us to our next steps, the no-bid survey. We're going to talk about that in more detail on the county presentation after we hear from the public, yeah. We will have $5 million in funding available by FY29 to help support initiatives at Cornerstone, including the farm stop or other concepts. And then we're going to determine the market viability of that very program. And with that, any – Okay, Rick, thank you. All right, Commissioner, so there's a lot there. I did want to kind of open it up to the public and let them speak on the things they've heard so far, and then we're going to get back to this local food retail presentation if the county's prepared. If we can, after we hear public comment and we finish with this part, I know that we've got some folks who are going to need to leave, so we need to get to some decision points potentially on the Hortab Medieval Fair. So if we could pop that in and then they come back to the – This is what happens. Every time we start to talk about the grocery and local food systems, we push it to the end of the meeting when everybody leaves. I'm just saying that happens almost every single time we have that conversation. So I'm here until we're done. I'm here until we're done. I'm here until we're done. I'm here until we're done. It's at the beginning of the meeting. Yeah. Okay, so any – Yeah. Did you want to say anything before we were talking about? Yeah, I just want to say how much the community appreciates the community meeting room at Shands, at the Eastside Clinic, and particularly I'm assuming that the one with ROTS is going to be a great size. That's 3,000 feet, square feet, I believe. That's a good size. That's a good size. That's a good size. That is very much appreciated, so thank you. Thank you. That could replace the Lincoln Auditorium as a – well, not replace it, but be another place like it. Yeah. All right. We're going to go ahead and now give the community an opportunity to come forward. If you will come up to the podium, introduce yourself. We've got a clock system here. Three minutes up there. You can see it really. I know you'll be less than three minutes. Yes. Parker Warren? Welcome. I'm Carrie Parker Warren, and I have a couple of things I want to say. First of all, I'd like to say thank you to our friends at the city, on the city commission, and our friends at the county for doing all these wonderful things that you're planning to do to the east side of town. So thank you. Thank you very much. The second thing is that I would like to talk about the urgent care center. I just learned today, Commissioner Chestnut mentioned something about a health room or some classroom that is out there. I think you might need some kind of community liaison so that we can know what's going on at that clinic. I was passing the other day with a friend, and she said, hold up. Stop. Slow down. Let's see how many cars are there. So that information that the young lady gave us today is very, very, would be very, very helpful for my community to know what's going on and how many people that you're serving out there. Do you have some kind of booklet, some kind of information? Do you have a card so that I can take it back to the community? And you can perhaps present that to the east side of town because that is some very good information that would be helpful to my community. So before you leave, let us know how we can get those stats for my community. And the next thing I want to talk about is the legacy project. I would like, we've been working on that for many years, and now hopefully something is going to be done. I ask you, why don't you rent a bulldozer and dig a hole periodically so we'll know that you have not forgotten us, and you're doing something on that property. Because every time I pass it, I see dirt, weed, bushes. And I did see beginning to park over there, but Commissioner Cornell saw that that didn't happen. It become a truck stop. So let's just dig a hole so that my community can understand that you are thinking about us even if you're not talking about it. We want to see something happen. Some dirt, a bulldozer, some cement, something. And the other thing that I wanted to say is to, when you get ready to have those educational classes at the clinic, urgent care center, please add obesity and healthy living. Those are some of the things that the people would be interested in in my community. Of course, all that has to do with high blood pressure and diabetes. So let's get some classes going and get somebody to get that information to our community because I know some of the people would attend it, including myself. So take those little hints and communicate. Don't just say we're doing this. We want to know what the progress is. And we also need a timeline for that legacy project. A timeline. Because we are guessing what time are they going to start. So I think the legacy project people left, but they need to know that our community is requesting a timeline so we can hold you to task. Got it. Appreciate you. Okay. Next speaker, please. Oh, that's it? Nope. That's not it. Kelly. Kelly stuck behind me. Okay. You know how to sneak up on you. Yeah. Go ahead. Sorry. I've heard frequently about the area just recently about the Swid Meadows, an area that was designated for special focus on economic development in the early 90s and nothing has been done. Unfortunately, those few times I've heard it talked about lately has been me. So when is something going to happen? I thought this would be the perfect time talking about Southeast Gainesville development and initiatives. It's still not there. It's an Eastside activity center. But nothing's happened out there. Right. I mean, I think of the short time that things happened for Celebration Point. A lot of public investment went into making the infrastructure ready for that over a short time. So we're talking about 30 years, this area out there past Eastside. How long? Not long. This is supposed to be the same. I also want to ask, since you talked about the bus transfer station, the name, I heard the name Claudine Colvin suggested that bus transfer. Did you hear that or did you suggest it? No. I heard it when he said it. I heard it when he said it. I first heard this from Tom Ivoyaga at RTS. And I wholeheartedly agree. So maybe by the time you break ground that you'll have the name. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Boyd. Next speaker, please. Come on up. Pull that microphone right up. My name is Brian Harris. Born and raised here in Gainesville, northeast side of Gainesville. Love what we're hearing about the southeast side of Gainesville, what they're doing and developing up it. We also would like to have, you know, a collaboration as well on the northeast side of town, northeast 15th Street and 8th Avenue. We are owners of three parcels along that area and looking for, you know, collaboration with the city and efforts put forward. Thanks for being here. I appreciate that. All right. Anyone else? Mr. Smith, if you want to real briefly talk about the grant. Yeah, that grant. Certainly. Let's do that as soon as we wrap. Yeah. That'll be on the TV. Monica. Hey. So good afternoon. I was a little bit late, so I think I missed the part about the 15th Street road construction. Monica Frazier. But I just want to say I traveled that road during the school year. I was on that road every day, multiple times a day. It is incredibly bad. And unless you drive that road, you don't understand how bad it is. Every time it rains, those potholes open. So if we can just put this on a weekly maintenance schedule for public works, because it literally you're playing, missed the pothole, missed the pothole, missed the pothole. And so you call, but you can't tell them every single one. They just, you just have to drive it all the way from 7th Avenue, turning in from 7th Avenue, because that part gets missed a lot right there. And so you've got potholes there. And then they really just go all the way down to where the road meets coming from 4th. And so if we can just make that a regular maintenance thing instead of having citizens call and say, please come fix this, that would really be helpful. Thanks. Thanks. Anyone else? Okay. Rick, do you want to go ahead and talk about Northwest? Certainly. As you're aware, back in October, the City Commission approved a grant program focused on 8th Avenue and Waldo Road. The program budget was set for $2 million. We have four types of grants. We have a residential focused grant. We have a business improvement grant where folks can upgrade the interior and exterior of their commercial buildings. We have a site improvement grant that will help folks improve the aesthetics of their parking lots, their vacant lots, their church grounds, whatever. And finally, we have a fairly big ticket item for revitalizing vacant and underutilized properties. For instance, the JEA site on 8th Avenue and Waldo Road. We've been marketing this for probably four months now, five months since January. And Friday is finally the deadline for submission of the grants. We have done extensive outreach. Probably at least everyone on 8th Avenue with a property or a building has received a flyer email from us. We're able to access the email, letters, e-blasts are mailed from communications department. We've done this routinely. We've had, I guess, about 30 folks have come into our office as of this week looking for more guidance, help with filling out the application. We're looking forward to see what receptivity we're getting come Friday at 5 o'clock. So if you're listening in, don't be late. We're closing the doors and we're running out the back so we don't have to, you know, talk to people who are just a minute late. But anyways, if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer them. We're excited about this. It kind of is a good companion for the public improvement project going on at MLK and Citizens Field. Okay. Thank you. All right, Chris. Is there anything else? So I'm good for a whole other hour. I don't know how long the Medieval Fair item is. What's your timetable? So the Medieval Fair, 10 minutes? Because I do want to have some discussion on local food. That's our next item. What are you going to do? I imagine it's going to take longer than a 10-minute affair. Okay. All right. Let's do the Medieval Fair and shoot to have that done by 3, and then we'll get started on local food. That'll give us plenty of time to get to the county's presentation and have some discussion. I do apologize for the length of the agenda. There's just a lot of really good things going on in Southeast Gainesville, and I think it's important that we share it. Okay. Welcome. We all get out in the community and talk about the things that are getting done, and sometimes we get a little help from the media on that. But it's important to put it all in context and talk about, you know, here's what we're doing on Southeast 8th Avenue, Southeast 15th Street, and the surrounding neighborhoods. So I'm glad we had the opportunity to just list it all out. I think that matters. So thank you all. Appreciate you being here. Good afternoon. Thank you for expediting this for us. We appreciate it. I'm Leslie Ladendorf, the Assistant Director for Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs at the City of Gainesville. Here with me today I have Sunshine Andre. She's the Assistant Manager for Cultural Affairs, and Carol Velasquez Richardson, who is the Manager for Cultural Affairs. We are going to give you a brief overview of the steps we've taken since the last time we've met about the Hogtown Medieval Fair and the progress that we're making to bring it back to some of its glory. Okay, so real quick, where we've been, as most of you know, the Hogtown Medieval Fair this year is actually celebrating its 40th year. We started off first at the Thomas Center for four years. We were at the Alachua County Fairgrounds for 30. We went virtual for one year during COVID, and then two years we were at an Archer Road location, the old YNC Sports Complex. The past three years we have been at Depot Park, where we've been able to offer six stages of entertainment, host 92 vendors, all in the case of one weekend. And it was free, and it was a free event, which was much appreciated to many, close to 50,000 people in fact. So, last summer, spring and summer, we met with city and county commissioners to let you know where we currently were with the Medieval Fair and the current situation, and we were given some direction to reach out to the Gainesville Raceway, as well as explore the Job Corps site. We've had some success with the Gainesville Raceway and those communications. Thank you so much for the extra support that we received from both commissioners that really helped us reopen that conversation with the Raceway. So, after the letter was sent to the Raceway, we've had multiple conversations, both email and meetings with the Raceway leadership. We had a site visit for our team so that they could get their feet on the ground and see what it looks like. And then, just recently, we received a proposal from the Raceway for the use of the space and the correlating amount for the lease. So, this is the location. You'll see it's not actually on the drag strip. I just wanted to be very clear that it's the back portion of the property that we are looking to host the Medieval Fair. The rental cost for two weekends is $80,000. There is sufficient space for parking for the event program itself. We are able to have a ticketed entrance, and we are able to run multiple weekends. We did decide to go to a two-weekend instead of a three-weekend both for cost and logistic purposes this year with the idea that we can grow. Just in case you wanted to see the whole layout or we need to reference back to that, we have the larger screenshot. Of course, going from a ticketed event or from a free event to a ticketed event, costs are going to increase. This year, at Depot Park, our total expenses was $120,066. I can't work. $661. There we go. I can get it out. So we are looking at $592,427 with going to the raceway. Of course, the equipment rentals go up. Performers is where we see a big increase in that, as well as services and staffing. Everything increases going to the two weekends and then having an enclosed ticketed event. We also have to include parking management, security, things that we would not otherwise have at the Depot Park event. Our initial revenue projections, and these are looking at relatively conservative attendance numbers. We're projecting our revenue to be $510,643, which does not include the contributions that are provided by the city and the county. That is just the revenue brought in through ticket sales and through booties. And I just want to add to this. The ticket sales are conservative, but we're coming off of three years of a free event. So we know there's going to be a climb in trying to get people back on board to paying. We're already kind of hearing that in the community. So we are aware of that. And we just don't have the best information right now on how the community is going to respond to a ticketed event. But we're hoping, it seems like there's a desire for it to be back to what it was or close to what it was. And so we're hoping that we're going to see these numbers that we have posted here for the ticket revenue. They're going to love the parking. They're going to love the parking. Absolutely. Even better than Archer Road where we were in a watermelon path. This is not a watermelon path. So if we look at our projected revenue and look at both what the city has done for their contribution and the county, we would have $650,000, $643, which is plenty to bring back the event in its full form before we went to Depot Park. So that means bringing back the joust, bringing back some of our key performers that we had to not have back at the Depot Park event. So it really is getting back to the glory of this event for a two weekend. Can I ask a question? Do we have, do you all know what the projections, not when it was free, but in its former glory, what the, what the total visitors were that were resident, County, Alaska County residents versus visitors from out of town? Yes, but I don't have those off the top of my head. We track it through our sales. We literally have a button that says, are you a county resident or not, yes or no. And so we're going to continue that with our new ticketing system. So we'll be able to track it even better. I guess I'm just interested in the possibility of having a tiered ticket price where Alaska County residents would pay less than a visitor coming in from out of town. It just feels like it would be a, you know, it's like our, it's like a community event versus, you know, the visitors and the visitors being the ones that wait and subsidize the cost of the event rather than it being on the backs of the residents who are already paying for it. So we are currently pretty kind of under market a little bit at $20. And so we've had discussions about raising the ticket price to 25 to get us a little bit closer to market. So that it is a possibility. With this plan, we also bring back our, our field school trips and our, we call it family Friday, which is half off admission tickets. So it makes it, it provides a reasonable community day. It's Friday. It's the one Friday that we have. And just a quick slide. So you can understand that the ticket sales do make up the majority of our, of our revenue. And we get some from booth fees and some from sponsorships and grants, but the ticket sales are what feeds this event. And then our recommendation is just to hear the presentation. So we can check that box and get some guidance. If that guy's paying $25, I guarantee it. With his horse. Maybe he spent all the money on the horse already. Yeah. Okay. Mr. Book and Mr. Alford. I think Mr. Alford might have been before me. Go ahead. Commissioner Alford. Okay. I have two questions. Is there going to be camping for the, for the. Participants. Yep. There will be camping on site for participants. It's dry camp only. There's no amenities, but it's the same situation that we had at Archer Road. So they were those that will stay on site, understand how to work that. Excellent. Okay. Then the second question for transportation limited individuals. Is there any thoughts about a shuttle? I know there's going to be plenty of parking, but not either. The nice thing about being downtown is some folks that were transportation limited. Is that it's there. Is that it's there. So we've had to, there's the trams that we utilized in the downtown area. We will have there on site, but to your, I'm assuming you're talking about transporting from the city. Yeah. To the raceway. We haven't had those conversations. I know it gets really pricey doing charter buses. Definitely something that we can explore. And if not something we could offer this year, just because we're trying to keep everything conservative, we could explore that for the future too. Okay. Thank you. It sounds like you need to sell around 18,000 tickets to make your gold at $25. $25 a ticket. Yeah. 35. Yeah. Let me see. When I, I just looked at the numbers from the Archer road site, I think we sold 27 with a mixture of both adult ticket and youth ticket because the youth tickets are less expensive. Yeah. Yeah. So that is pretty conservative. Yes. Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you've done exactly what we asked you to do, which is find innovative solutions and figure out how to get it to an alternative venue. I am nervous about the expenses in the summaries. There's no doubt about that. So the price point, you all did some research to figure out the price point. It's real different for a family of two and a child to come downtown and walk for free because it has to be convenient as opposed to make it a destination several miles, you know, outside say the urban core and then maybe spend $75. So just tell me a little bit about your thinking there as it relates to that. So a lot of the shows that we're seeing across the state, $25 is around the ballpark now. The Orlando Renaissance Festival, I think is coming in at 24 or 25. The South Florida shows are closer to 30. And then some of your other fairs up north are running 32. There's a fair that's actually starting its first year at $40 a ticket, which is high. Yeah. It's a little steep in comparison of everything else. So if you look at what else is going on in Florida, $25 is that kind of lower end of what fairs are charging for an adult ticket. Something that we do, sorry, let me just finish my thought, our youth ticket. So a lot of fairs will do 12, ages 12 and up is where they might start or they might end their youth ticket. Ours goes all the way up to 17. So trying to make it easier for families to be able to participate, we keep that youth age bracket a lot more flexible, wider. Thank you. Did not get the word. And just to piggyback real quick on that is that this is a circuit. So there's literally folks who travel around in a circuit to go to these events. So you're not the only one there. A lot of them will come in this year. They will also go to Sarasota. They will also go to Orlando. They also go to Brevard. So they're making the circuit. They're making the rounds. So we're competing, but we're also part of that ecosystem. Okay. Right. We're going to get a certain amount. We're going to get some minimum amount of people who are going to attend regardless because they're going to be at it. So I understand that two other quick questions, because there'll probably be some others from my, from my colleges. The, um, I think you answered. So there's going to be two Fridays that you've added on. And those are really specific to maybe, you know, education type or just one Friday. Just one Friday. The Friday that's in between the two weekends will be, uh, it's a school day. So we promote it out for all the schools. They come at a discounted rate. They have, there's a chaperone ticket. Oh, that's cool. In conjunction with that, we do a family Friday. Uh, so we're also promoting to just general attendees with a discounted, uh, tickets are like half off for both youth and for adults. And we encourage a lot of scout groups to come on those days as well. Right. Very good. So we've got 130,000 city contribution that that's, that's all encompassing the city and staff and spend. That's every cost that we can figure out. But what does that exactly? Because that's a big figure. You want to add that? That is, it really encompasses the general expenses that you see in, in that spreadsheet. Our staffing, um, during the year is covered through our general staffing budget, but the staff that's onsite for the weekends that are actually physically onsite, we do cover through our budget. So when you see staffing on there, that is what it's covering just during the show. Um, so it does cover this, but, and some of that is unfortunately has to be over time, but we try to do a lot of flex and stuff. But the 130,000 incorporates that? The days of, yes. Is there any other costs that the, um, the city incurs that are not a part of this? This is a, this is a very good breakdown of expenses. It does include all of our plan, our staff's time for planning the event throughout the year and working on, um, any marketing, um, preparing that, our communications team helping with us. All of those staff are not included. Okay. Commissioner Wheeler. Commissioner Engel and then Commissioner Tessa. Thank you. I see, Jessica, I see you've come to the table. Did you, did you have something you wanted to add? I sure do, but why don't I go after you all? Well, you, because you and I are going to be talking about the same thing. We're the same. Yeah. Because what I was going to be asking, I'm really excited about this and it's really exciting to see you all working on this together. Sunshine, you know, way back. Little child. But, um, I didn't know if there were grant opportunities, maybe the National Endowment for the Arts or anything else that you all could down the road get, you know, to help, uh, with this. And so, Jessica, you know about these kinds of grants too. First, I just want to say, um, kudos to all of you. I love working with you and, um, have known you all for a very long time and think you just do an amazing job at everything you do. Um, I'm just here to express my appreciation for all of your behind the scenes work, um, and setting this up with the Raceway. I know it was a long, um, conversation and persistence paid off with that. Um, I'm also here to share, you know, this implicitly, but visit Gainesville, Alachua County and our entire team is here to support you in everything that you're doing. Um, we have a big, impressive marketing machine that, um, we can get through. Um, we can get the word out and, um, make sure that we're putting all of our marketing muscle behind your efforts. And, um, so I know it, we always are in communication, but through this process we'll be here to support you every step of the way. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, and I, and I think people will understand in the community the need to raise these prices in order to, you know, make up the deficits you've experienced in the past. And, and, and, you know, again, marketing that idea that, you know, we were rebuilding here might, uh, also help ease that, the concern for the increase in the price. Thank you both. Um, Commissioner Wheeler, to your, um, question about the grants, um, the city of Gainesville, um, Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs actually was, um, scored the top second organization in the state of Florida to get funding. And it was vetoed by the governor two times in a year. So therefore we lost $150,000 per year. So those are the additional funds that we were using to kind of offset some of our programming. Um, right now we're waiting to see what's going to happen this third year. Um, the other thing is we did receive a National Endowment for the Arts for our America 250. Um, so at that point we're not eligible to apply again in this fiscal year because we were just awarded. Can you do that every year then? I mean, is there a new cycle that you could apply for at another time? Yes. When we're, when we, um, fulfilled this grant, then we're eligible to apply again. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I just wanted to say that I've, I know personally a lot of people that work these type of events, just artisans, craftsmen, and people that go that. And I think in a lot of ways, the downtown medieval fair was better for the city of Gainesville. I mean, I think it was, you know, brought people into the town, but it was a very diminished event. And I think moving it back out to the racetrack really gives it the chance to grow back into this kind of regional draw that it was before. Um, so I'm very much in favor of that. I think this is a really good idea. I'm glad we've been able to work it out with the raceway. And, um, yeah, just thank you very much for the work you're doing on this. I don't know if there has been any negotiations with the raceway or not to see if we can add an extra E at the end of the word raceway. It's too old time enough. But, uh, if we could get that going, I think that would be accurate as well. Raceway. Thank you, Mr. Engel. I have to make Mr. Willits. Well, you haven't signed the contract yet. Mr. Chastan, I think Mr. Willits. Okay. Well, I just want to say I'm very, very pleased with the job that you all have done here. This is great. I definitely want to see it go to the raceway. Um, is there any way, uh, Jessica, for us to increase the funding from Visit Gainesville? We can definitely look at it. So now, um, we support two city programs through our sponsorship program. Um, we do the downtown arts festival and then obviously the medieval fair. Um, right now that is 10,000 for each. Um, and then we put our own money behind it. We put our money behind the marketing and, um, and all of that. So there'll be soft costs. That's great. Yeah. All right. Well, your marketing team is great. So that will help a lot. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chastan. Mr. Willits. Um, you didn't mention it, but it's just a particular county commission. So we all in the public remembers that in this process of the past couple of years, uh, when we weren't charging, some of that was being covered by basically, excess funds from previous years when it was super successful. But in the past year, definitely. And going into this year, this was straight out of city budget that we were just paying money in years that we literally fired people or at least removed positions. We held this because it was very, very important to our community. So I just wanted to point that out that even this year going forward with $130,000 contribution from the city, we are still talking about tight times. Um, and then so I, some question about going to the future is the idea that we would have more revenue than expense. Is this to cover contingencies of whether we don't sell enough tickets this year? Basically. And then after this year, we would know a little better going forward. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So yeah, the, the intent with this is to get back to, to an event that pays for itself. Um, because the truth is we, we have been spending firm reserves to, to make the event happen downtown. I loved it downtown. Uh, it was, uh, a, uh, an economic development opportunity for downtown. Uh, while we were spending money on it, we were also attracting new and different people to downtown and people who were downtown, but may not have known about the medieval fair. So it, it was money well spent, I think, uh, to, to do that, but it can't be downtown forever. Uh, Depot park is not a, it is possible to sell tickets to an event at Depot park. It is a big hassle and we can't really present the event as, as it ought to be presented in a downtown venue. Uh, there are things like jousting, as you see the photo of up here, um, that just isn't possible, uh, at Depot park. I guess it's possible it wouldn't be advisable. No. Um, we can do these kinds of things at the raceway. It has been, we have talked this, uh, every angle we could possibly get for years now to try to figure out where it might best be. We've had money set aside, uh, through wild spaces, public places to purchase a venue. That venue just doesn't exist, uh, inside the city limits. It is, it is not that we don't have it wanted to do that and own the property through the city, but it just, it doesn't exist. I think this is a great opportunity to not only bring the event back to its former glory and beyond and make it sustainable economically, but to also build a better relationship with Gainesville Raceway. Uh, I've, I've had conversations with them. They would like to host more events out there than just being known as, as for Gator Nationals. Gator Nationals is a big deal and, and we're, we're very pleased to have it in the community, but there's more that can happen at Gainesville Raceway. And this is sort of a, it's, it's an opportunity. It's a, it's a way to prove what, what's possible to happen there. So I think, uh, there are many winners here and we will find something else to fill the space in, uh, in downtown. I'm quite sure. Um, I, I would love for us at, for the Gainesville city commission to give positive direction to our staff to move forward, um, with a motion. Um, Mr. Mayor, I, I, I move that we, um, direct city staff to continue their work and to produce a two week, uh, Hogtown and people fair at the raceway. Gainesville Raceway. Gainesville Raceway. Second. We have Mo sir to second. Uh, let's hear from the community and then we'll come back around for vote. Welcome Mr. Plath. Well, I've been thrilled at participating in the fair in the recent past. So I hope to see it build again. Maybe you could work the name Renaissance on the title to get this idea of rebuilding. Um, nice. Uh, shuttles sounds like a very important idea. You could get maybe RTS buses or school buses to run from Rosa Parks downtown. Um, not maybe all day or certain rush hours or something. And I hope you will also have live traffic management at that intersection. Waldo and 50, is that 51st and 53rd and the Gainesville roadway. Cause you remember the horror that traffic was when it was out Archie road. So that's going to need live management and automated signals not going to handle. Thank you. And I would note that, you know, the Gainesville Raceway and the, uh, law enforcement who work, uh, Gator Nationals, uh, do a pretty good job and have lots of history with, with moving traffic in and out around Gator Nationals period. So that was a thing that to me makes that an attractive. Is there any other, um, public comment though? Is there any? Commissioner Boat. Yeah. So it sounds like to me, um, Mr. Mayor, the great limiter really is weather, right? Uh, for us, because this is an event without really weather contingencies. Um, so again, that's a, that's a concern. Um, I would think that you mentioned downtown and if there's the capability for city staff to figure out how we can generate buzz and marketing and activity in the downtown area that leads up to it. We did some of that before. Um, anything that will allow us to bring some of it down there and then market it to the, um, to outside the city limits, I think will be, um, really welcome to hear. We are planning on doing the preview at Depot Park, not Depot Park, at Boatly Plaza. It was very successful last year, um, for our first time trying that. So we plan on continuing that again this year, uh, the weekend before the fair. So it can get some good buzz, generate some extra, but traffic downtown, um, and be a wind wind kind of situation. Yeah. And director you're of, uh, and our effort can probably help us quite a bit there, but it would be, it would benefit that those areas and those businesses quite a bit. And they'll appreciate the fact that while it's moving out, we're still trying to bring some activity to them that they're going to benefit from. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, Chair Cornell. I just want to say congrats to the city for bringing this back. I presume this vote is going to pass. Um, I know that with the ticket sales, hopefully we can track who is coming in from out of town. I know Jessica's team is going to be all over this and, um, and, uh, we'll see how that presents next year. Um, cause I know, I know it's going to be really, really successful. So thank you. Commissioner. Oh, just real quick. You know, the bus could be a time travel machine. I love that. Actually, I've had this, this, this, this, it's in my, on my bucket list to have a performer on the bus. So there's actually entertainment while people are traveling. There you go. Oh, right. Yeah. All right. I think it's a little bit of a ball boat. Right. So all, all we need is sponsors for, for the, uh, for the bus. Yes. Yes. That's Nakia. That's what I'm hearing. All right. Any, uh, any other comments? All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. That passed unanimously with commissioners Eastman and Duncan Walker. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That leads us back to local food retail, farm stock concept in Skainsville. And I think, uh, that's the county. Yeah. County's going to get that presentation. And even when I leave, we will still have a quorum. So if any action needs to be taken, um, vice chair of Brazil, you can take off. Yeah. I can move up there. To see everybody again, I think the last joint meeting I took part in was back in December. My name is Bailey McClellan, agricultural economic development coordinator for Alachua County. And today I am bringing back our findings from a local food retail model that we've explored and a few exciting updates from our food hub feasibility study. Um, we're now in our pilot project phase. All right. So just recently in February 3rd, that our, our board of county commissioners directed staff to work collaboratively with the city of Gainesville to explore the concept of a farm stop in east side of Gainesville. And in late March city of Gainesville staff, uh, Nyesha Pierre and myself attended a three-day online training led by Argus farm stop, a farmer driven local food marketplace based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Um, now this model is described, um, commissioner Frizia, you, you hit the nail on the head. Um, a little bit before I could thank you, but essentially it is, uh, described as a blend of a farmer's market in a traditional grocery store. Um, and really the defining characteristic of this model is its consignment based sales structure. And this idea in agriculture is not new, but this model seems like this organization has refined it and it's been proven successful for them. And that idea is that the farmer, their local farmers retain ownership of their product primarily for this model produce. Um, they retain the ownership of their products through sell all the way to the customer. Um, they set their own prices and they receive a 70, 30 revenue split. So, and unlike our traditional holes, our traditional wholesale channels for, uh, grocery where our farms are earning maybe 15, give or take cents on the dollar. Um, this model farms are, uh, retaining 70% of their revenue and the farm stop model itself, 30%, you know, the 30 cents earned on the dollar is what's maintaining the actual retail infrastructure, the staffing, merchandising, marketing, refrigeration, and food storage, and the point of sale systems. And in this model, um, retail sales are supplemented by an onsite cafe. So across three locations at the artist farm stop, they incorporate a, um, coffee shop, baked goods, and some light food service to really pad their margins and drive a customer traffic throughout the day. And when we're looking at this model, it's relatively small in size across their locations. They're utilizing between two and 4,000 square feet of space. That includes front of house and back of house. So pretty small for, um, a marketplace operation. And customers are shopping from products supplied by multiple farms. This model is exclusively local to the, in our local farms to the Ann Arbor, Michigan area. And they're shopping just like you would at any other marketplace. You have your, um, your basket, you're shopping in this area. It's, you know, different, a little different than what we may see sometimes, but they're shopping from their produce decks. So apples and blueberries, whenever they're in season, um, different farms, but one single checkout system, just like you would at a typical marketplace. And across those three locations, the Argus farm stuff works with more than 200 farms and food producers and reported approximately $6.9 million in sales in 2024. And since opening in 2014, the organization reports earning more than, returning more than $26 million directly to participating farmers. And on average, the top performing farmers who sell to via the farm stop, they're earning around $45,000 annually, um, just from farm stop sales. And each location serves around 275 customers a day. And those shoppers tend to make frequent smaller purchases throughout the week with an average grocery spend of around $22. And this pattern, Argus, this pattern of spending, Argus describes as a one bag market, where customers, customers make regular visits throughout the week instead of what we consider. Like, um, I call them buggies. Some people call them shopping carts. Um, one buggies worth of groceries for the week where you're collecting, um, your food, but also your paper towels and your diapers and wherever else this, um, they describe it as a one bag market with more frequent visits throughout the week. The customer base is concentrated among adults age 65 and older and secondarily among young professionals ages 25 to 34. And a significant number of their shoppers live in one to two person households. And location is critical for the success of this model. And in the Argus farm stop area in Ann Arbor, Michigan, their stores are situated within dense residential neighborhoods, along highly visible transportation routes and near public transit and bicycle routes. And I want to bring a little context to the Ann Arbor market and where this originates. Um, their market, their community is shaped by the presence of University of Michigan, you know, similar to ours. They just, um, they're a smaller scale community than the city of Gainesville. And their population is around 122,000 residents. It's a dense walkable community with a strong consumer demand for locally produced foods. And I want to tie that into, um, I want to bring a little bit back to our food hub feasibility study and what we're doing there. Um, I know I brought an update on that back in December. So I want to bring a little bit on how could local food retail be incorporated into our food hub study. If, um, if that is the direction we, we choose to go. Um, so again, this study is focused on understanding the infrastructure, the logistics and the market connections to support local food movement at scale. And just a refresher for the table. Um, a food hub provides coordinated services, whether that's a brick and mortar facility or a coordinated network for local food aggregation sales distribution and marketing to connect our small, our regional, small and mid-sized farms to larger markets. Um, with this study specifically focused on institutional markets. And I want to take us back to our phase one of the project, which was our market analysis phase, where we heard from our stakeholder and community that there's a large interest for this. Alachua County food hub to be a multifunctional facility model. That would include services beyond the course of this, the core function of aggregation and distribution to serve business support services, food processing and commercial kitchen infrastructure. And this sort of ties back into this potential farm stop. Um, our community said a food hub model should incorporate local food retail opportunities. And then more recently in March of this year, our food system consultants on the study new venture advisors. And Alachua County launched a 10 month pilot project with frogs on farms and Hawthorne to test these food hub functions in a real world environment. So those functions aggregation distribution, um, commercial kitchen infrastructure, business support services, and local food distribution to consumers. And if you know a little bit about frog song, um, they already do operate aggregation as an aggregation and distribution network. They have some infrastructure to do so, and they're doing it very successfully across the state of Florida, actually where they work with farms throughout Florida and throughout the Southeast to aggregate those local food products and distribute throughout the state to, um, consumer direct to consumer shoppers, institution, um, hospitality partners, and, um, and wholesale buyers throughout the state. And then this pilot with frogs on, since they already have the infrastructure as an aggregation and distribution network, we are focusing on expanding farmer participants, expanding Alachua County farmer participation in coordinated aggregation and distribution efforts, increasing institutional purchases of local locally grown food, and improving access through direct to consumer sales. And then, um, towards the end of our pilot project around November, December, there will be community, community distribution partnerships through an end of the year giveaway, food giveaway to community residents experiencing food insecurities. And then since March, when we kicked off the pilot, we have our frog song really, it's all their, um, and great success have accomplished several early milestones. Um, I'm excited to report UF dining has committed to purchasing local food products through the pilot project activities for the late summer semester. Um, frog song currently is under discussion. It's having discussions with Alachua County public schools regarding food purchasing for fall, fall semester activities. Frog song hosted three in-person farmer networking sessions on their farm to engage with, Alachua County and regional farmers to learn about the pilot. How can they expand their markets or new revenue streams? And from those in-person networking sessions so far, they've onboarded five new farm, five new Alachua County farms into, uh, their local food as a local food supplier. Um, they are currently developing or they are developing a, um, workforce training program for their staff in Alachua County residents to become educated in food handling, packing and distribution. Um, Um, and they also have an onsite commercial kitchen where their food suppliers can, you'd be, can utilize the kitchen space to create value added products. Most recently, they've onboarded a hot sauce, um, food producer to use their kitchen to develop and pack their locally produced hot sauce to be funneled through frog songs distribution. And I want to remind us, you know, this is a 10 month pilot project. Our study, um, our final deliverables will probably be early to mid 2027. Those deliverables from what we learned through the pilot and the data collected, um, our food system consultants, new venture advisors will recommend a food hub model design that is tailored to our community. Um, they'll provide facility concepts and site considerations and a business plan and operating structure for us to move forward. And with that, I'm happy to answer any, any questions. Uh, yes. So, um, I know, I know the frog dogs folks, um, pretty well actually. Um, but their big focus is organic. Um, so when we move into a larger food hub model, given that, um, you know, farmers have, it's very difficult to get their land certified as organic or things like that, or is there going to be opportunity for both organic and non-organic certified foods? Absolutely. It's not, um, the intention for a future Alachua County food hub. Um, when we get to that point to be solely organic through the RFP process, um, frogs long had the existing infrastructure to accomplish a lot of the data we needed and through a competitive, um, scoring matrix. They're great. Yeah. They're fabulous. And they were able to meet some of the standards needed for this pilot. And, but you're right. It is difficult for some farms to become certified organic. And that, they don't have to be certified organic to move though. They don't. Yeah. They buy from farms that aren't organic. Yeah. Their products are certified organic. Right. Anything that they're moving of their own product through that market is organic. And they do have a lot of partnerships through their certifier with other organic farms, but you don't have to be organic to sell to the. You don't have to be organic. They, they do have some standards on who they want to purchase their food from. Yeah. So you don't have to be certified organic, but they do, if they're onboarding a farm, they want to do farm visits. They're pretty strict about it. And see how, if it's meeting their brand standards and, but you don't have to be certified, maybe just organic practices in your operation. I just want to be able to support all the farms in the area. Agreed. Yeah. That would be my goal. Okay. Thank you. In your research, did you find anything in terms of, or when you were with meeting with folks, smaller storefronts like neighborhood storefronts that could sell or market these, the produce, you know, does it have, did it have to be a big thing out, you know, in a, in a commercial area? Is there anything that's actually serving within residential, commercial areas? Currently in our community. In our community or in whatever you can. Oh, there, the, the model exists. So this, the farm stop model, if that's specifically what you're asking for, it's, it's primarily in the Northeast. However, our community, it's, it's not operating in a silo and the, just this model. Um, it's how they have it organized is very successful in their community. There's great. Um, it seems there's a drive for local food access. I think it's always been, it seems like it's getting a lot of traction in our community right now. I can say there's a wonderful local farmer in the Waldo area that is opening really up. Um, they've taken ownership of a, um, defunct, uh, dive bar in the Waldo area. And they're turning that into a farm stop. They're aggregating local food. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Because I know at one time I had seen a food truck. Yes. They're selling produce too in the neighborhood and would have a route. And I don't know what happened, you know, with that, if it, you know, what happened, but, and also, you know, even with the little, the cotton club, um, quadrant over there, where's the little grocery store over there. We're trying to renovate. I would love to see that even being, you know, a functional place to sell, just milk and eggs and cheese and butter, you know, or something that, you know, neighborhoods would need. The idea of having smaller places like that, that are easier. People can walk to in their neighborhoods, just to access the basics. And that's what we learned through researching this model. At this point is that location characteristic of walkability. It's accessible to, you know, a bicycle route, public transit, are core components of what makes it successful in the case study in Ann Arbor. Um, I think that probably lends itself to this community as well. Um, but the, the story of local food, like small scale, local food accessibility. Um, it really seems to be taking off right now that the folks in, um, Waldo, I mentioned that's farm set direct there. Um, they're actually past recipients of our small farmer grant. Um, there's another fall, another small farmer grant recipient, actually exotics, um, and Archer. They just opened their farm. They're actually, um, farm their farm store. Um, and that nature of small scale food access. I think it's always existed, but now trying to find a, a brick and mortar storefront for it is where we are. Gotcha. Well, there's a place, one more across Waldo road on eight. there used to be a small store there. Um, just a local, I don't even know what they sold in there, but there's some of these on these corner places, you know, that traditionally have sold whatever that could be expanded, you know, into a local grocery. I think if we could figure out a way to convince those people to let us help them move into that kind of, uh, produce. And probably those storefronts are what would work for this model. I, this, uh, Ann Arbor example, example, there are three locations are, I know at least the first location they opened was a, um, small, um, storefront and old gas station. They dressed up and make, make it look very nice. Yep. So that's what they, they recommended when they were looking for applications. Thank you. Yeah. Um, I guess, thank you very much. I appreciate all the information and I appreciate y'all taking the time and the city staff too, for taking the time to like dive into this model. Um, you know, I mean, we've been at this since 2000 when we made the original motion to push for, you know, increased food access through a grocery store on the east side and using CRA funds on that front. I think we staff just showed you they've exhausted a lot of, of, of trial and error with trying to attract grocery and they got real close. Um, but unfortunately due circumstances outside of their control, they weren't able to do it. I do think that, um, mayor Ward is not wrong. Having Walmart and all the, and these big, big box stores that can buy and volume really don't lend themselves. It doesn't lend itself well to like another retail grocery kind of locating, you know, you know, in that area. Um, that's going to have everything that you could ever want. That's going to have your paper towels and your diapers and your canned beans and also your fresh produce. Um, but I do think that there is a real market as you've shown for this. And I think what you all are building at the corner, or what we are building at cornerstone with the bus depot and the entrepreneurship center and the east side clinic and community spaces is an ideal location for something like it's on a major corridor. Um, and it allows us the opportunity to potentially either co-locate a hub or with the hub already maybe operating and rocking and rolling and just expanding to have sort of spoken hub model where the hub would be operating the aggregation distribution, but there would be this retail component that could help to bring the food to one place, save farmers time and energy. Um, and still have that consignment model available. So I think, I guess what I wanted to kind of push forward and ask, as far as to give direction for our staff, I'd like to make the motion that we ask them to continue exploring this farm stock model with our CRA staff and the possibility of what that $5 million in investment could do for our food hub and a retail like farm stock model, not to spend it, but to just keep exploring that idea and what that would look like as we wrap up this farm hub, I mean this food hub pilot, we're going to need a sort of what are our next steps, you know, what are next steps on our side for the county and how does it tie into the work that we're doing with the CRA to increase food access. And I will say, while we're seeing a lot of these little models pop up, Mary Helen, we actually did that research. It was before Bailey's time, but early on in this whole process, one of the first things that we did was do the research of, could we do this with our corner stores? And we went and we did a survey of all the corner stores in East Gainesville and most of them aren't owned by local businesses. Most of them are owned by these international conglomerate companies. And so trying to partner with them, it's like trying to partner with Walmart or Dollar General, even though it looks like a corner store, it's not really a mom and pop. It's not owned by the people who live in those communities. So it makes it really hard. And we found that not very many of them were open to collaborating with us. Because the original idea we had was rather than try to do a single spot, let's, let's invest in those corner stores. Let's buy them some extra coolers. Let's maybe pay for a point of sale system. Let's maybe help them get SNAP benefits registered, things like that, so that they could start selling more of this produce. But we realized pretty quickly that very few of them, in fact, only one, I think of all of the ones that we talked to was even interested in the possibility of that conversation. So I do think it's going to take a different kind of tack, like buying an old liquor store or an old gas station and fixing it up or building something to compliment the work that's already happening at Cornerstone. And on the food truck side, I will say that while those mobile food trucks, and we do actually have one that's working now with the food is medicine program, that's traveling in community to deliver fresh food to those in need. Those things are highly, highly subsidized in almost every incidence, with grant funds and local government funds in the long term, because the cost of the driver and the gas and the insurance and all those things are just so high. It's really hard for the food costs to, especially for people who are in situations where they're income constrained with their food, it's hard to ever meet the needs of like running that infrastructure. And that's what happened with that food truck is the grant ran out and the truck ended. And we're seeing that across the board, these mobile markets came popped up as like a trend when USDA was funding them. And then once the USDA funding dried up, they all just kind of fizzled. So I think the reason that I've really appreciated this farm stop model is because it has economic sustainability, right? It's not reliant. I mean, it's reliant on local government for the underlying infrastructure and possibly the capital like building infrastructure, but not on the operations and maintenance, right? Like it covers its cost. If you could restate your motion, you have a second waiting, but you keep talking through the motion. No, that's not the motion. That was not the motion. That was not the motion. The motion was to ask our staff to move forward with the farm stop model and to work with the city staff on how to leverage the $5 million in investment at the CRA and that the CRA has for local food. The city clerk was very glad that that was not a city motion. And I seconded it. I said, I think you made a motion and I seconded it. So it's actually to continue the research and then to continue working with the CRA staff to explore this possibility. Yeah. I don't think we as a county can make a motion to instruct the city's allocation, but I think to continue exploring it. Yeah. I mean, they just put it on their slide. Yeah. Is Argus interested in expanding from Ann Arbor to Gainesville? Because they seem to be a very good private organization. They are a good private organization, but I think they love their community. I don't think they want to leave it or move beyond it. But if there ever comes a time you would like to hear from them, I ask them would they be open to a Zoom call in the future? Okay. Just so we can have a Q&A and they're open to it. All right. So on the county side, we have a motion to continue and asking our staff to work on this with the CRA staff. Is there any further discussion from the county or anyone from the city? Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Willis. A real quick question. It's just from the GCRA site in the bigger picture. I remember a $1 million figure, but this $5 million figure I'm less familiar with. It was $3 million when we started. I'm just trying to, you know, tie this all together. $1 million may have been for the, as a like real direct subsidy versus other infrastructure as a complete GCRA project. So that's why I just wanted the numbers to be reminded of. One, three, five or something in between. All the above. Okay. We started at $3 million as we went further into our budget exercise and identifying the remaining dollars we had through the end of the term of our agreement together. We've been identified up to $5 million. Obviously county, excuse me, city commission can reallocate those funds as they see fit. There's numerous projects that, you know, aren't fully funded in the CRA. So we're still waiting for some final direction from the city commission on that. Okay. Thank you. And so then I, I know that we, we talked about on east side in E-Hedi, the kind of dollars that would take for like a grocery store. People think it was a grocery store was probably very expensive to make it happen. Otherwise someone else would have done it. Right. And we were talking about perhaps on our side, not even go taking the old food line that at least we have some infrastructure already. This is, it'll be interesting to see how this goes forward. The model, just looking on a map real quick of Argus, they are, where they're located in Ann Arbor is not analogous to where, to east side. No, it's not at all. It's just not, right? If you want to get a bunch of students there who are very interested in this, it's got to be way closer to the university. Yeah. So that's why it'll be interesting to see what, what, what can come of this. Um, but I do think that it's always, it's always been my thought that one of the, that it would, it would have been better for us to do something that a little more like this, that's a little more locally grown from a small thing to a big thing. Whereas the focus in E-Hedi was kind of a like, out of the boxes have a grocery store, right? Be much bigger and kind of fix a lot of things all at once, as opposed to start small. Most communities start small with these kinds of models. Or if you have a food, a grocery co-op, they all start tiny, you know, but then now they started four years ago and now they're great models. So I think, I mean, probably if we could go back in a time machine 10 years ago, we should have gone back and said, we need to start something small, super community focused and supported, and then build it up and then suddenly, Oh, now we, now we have city money or county money and, um, or maybe land or whatever. So I think this is, even though it feels like we're going backwards, I think in the long term, cause our city staff did a lot of work. That's something like this probably, even though this may push it further and further down, that this is more likely because we offer not just our, our staff work on it. We literally just, you know, offer blank checks and could not get the right kind of fit. Not because I don't think we were being too picky. No, I think it's just the match. It's just a, it's a challenging space. I mean, you're not wrong that it's not like the Argus spot, but I will say that their primary customers are 65 and older and then 25 to 39. They're not students. Okay. It's not the college students that are walking there. That is, that is. It is important to know, like it is, but it is walkable and that's why these linkages, that 8th Avenue bicycle trail that you're creating, the redoing of 15th Avenue, the bicycle trail in that area, like the investment from the neighborhoods themselves and wanting this in their neighborhood, which is why I'm excited to hear them speak. It's like really important. Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine a lot of different places on, on our map of where like, I know this might, maybe sort of pick, pick up all those things. But so anyways, thank you for continued work. But thank you to city staff for reminding us of all the work we've done over the years. Uh, the commission has remained committed to something. Um, it just hasn't happened yet. Thank you. Yeah. So another factor that we haven't talked about is this time, at least is one of the reasons that it's hard to attract a full on grocery is, is density. There just aren't enough people living nearby where we have space where we want it to be. And that space doesn't include enough people nearby or has not as the legacy project, um, builds up, builds out as heartwood finishes, as, um, Hawthorne Heights is, is fully occupied. As Jesse's village is, uh, uh, completely occupied as Eastwood Meadows starts to, to build out. As Adam's home builds up. He said, he said preserve. Uh, so, so then, yeah, I'm sorry. Um, uh, then you, um, you add all those brand new folks to the existing folks who live there. And suddenly it becomes very attractive without us doing a whole lot. Grocery stores move where they can sell groceries and where they can sell enough groceries. And they've got software that will show them exactly where they need to be. And at some point that will come true because we're actually building the housing now. And as, as that fills in, we will start to see much more interest. I'm not saying this is bad. This is very good and we should, should move forward thinking about all this. This is not gonna be the last thing that happens. Um, as there are mouths to feed living near where we're talking about. But as we have watched the Hawthorne Road corridor empty out over the years, it's not empty. A lot of people still live there, but a whole lot of people left. And the number of people living near Cornerstone is significantly smaller than it was 25 years ago. So as we refill that, we will see grocery stores, which are generally agnostic to what people look like, but want to make sure there are people. They will start to, to be much more interested. It will be easier for us to, to market this. Um, and I just, I want to do a quick point on that. I think it's also like what we've noticed that the farmer's market moved, right? So it moved and it moved a little bit out of town. It moved like out of the core and it actually really improved the farmer's market. Not only did more farms that maybe weren't as close to town join, but also all of the people who live in that rural area who have very limited food access suddenly had something closer to them. And I think that we are seeing that like the grocery store just closed in Melrose and now it's a liquor store. And so I do think that having this in the East, I will also bring outlying folks into town into East Gainesville and bring other opportunities for local entrepreneurs who want to have food trucks, who want to have a local corner store for other things. Like I think it will help to bring in and have something closer, right? So you don't have to drive all the way to public store, all the way to, um, you know, whatever it is you're going for. And it's at a transportation hub, it's at a healthcare hub. Um, so I do think it'll make a difference. Yeah. Ultimately, my, my hope for, for Cornerstone for Ehedi is that by having the park and ride opportunity, uh, the RTS hub and the health hub and a food hub, that, that that becomes a center of commercial activity, stuff going on right there, whether that's, I mean, to serve the people who live there, who are about to live there, but also to serve the people, uh, who are, you know, from Hawthorne and points East, who are coming in to work every day, but don't necessarily want to park, pay to park at UF. So just two observations on this one. I'm really excited about it. Three observations on this one. I'm really excited about it. Um, two, I wanted to thank commissioner Prizia just for the knowledge and passion you bring on this topic. I guess God knows like there's lots of important things to work on and having somebody that's really an advocate for, for something like this is the type of thing that keeps it moving forward and keeps on the play. I really appreciate it. And the third thing is that I just really like the fact that we've got this GCRA where there's a good functional way for the two boards to cooperate that I don't know a lot of global values have, and I just like the fact that we're able to work together on these things as well as we do. Um, and I think this is a good example of just what we can do when we're together. And I really appreciate all that. Thank you, commissioner. I do have to leave here shortly. I'm right behind you. Right behind you. But thanks so much for all of this. Thank you, commissioner. All right. Got a motion and a second. Any public comment to the motion? Yeah, come on up. We'll get us through this motion, commissioner, and then I'm gonna leave it to you for public comment and the rest. Yeah, welcome. I have a tablecloth dress for this topic. Yeah. Um, I just wanted to let you guys know that we're doing a cool program with the G-PAL kids this summer. That's the Gainesville Police Athletic League. We're gonna be teaching them square foot gardening and food autonomy. And so I really love this direction because it's also empowering our neighbors to grow food in their yards that they can then sell at little venues like this. So every time we encourage somebody to learn how to plant a seed, we're going in the right direction. And then providing them, you know, consignment opportunities is just very powerful because we're gonna be teaching square foot gardening. And that's just, you can grow a lot in a little space. So I just wanted to thank you for that. Introduce yourself. Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Jamie Swick. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Ms. Swick. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Ms. Swick. All right. Darren. Come on up. Nancy Darren. Um, just, and I thank Anna. I thank all of you for this being a place where collaboration and cooperation can, can live. Um, the Argus is such a great model, um, for all the reasons listed. I fully support that. I really hope we continue to explore. And I know their model has been adopted in different places, a lot through the Midwest. Um, but there are variations on the theme and that we have this transit. I missed the earlier discussion, but food is medicine and local food that really is feeding people is going to be incredibly critical. And so we are facing a cliff that part of the world's already dropped off on given the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and what's happening, um, in multiple realms. And so the more that we can be growing, whether it's the square foot gardening, um, the food is medicine. There are clinics around the country that have like a little, um, you can buy food right there. You get your prescription at the clinic, you walk out the door, next door, and the food is right there for you. So I could see that happening here. Blue Cross Blue Shield in the Northeast is very interested in that whole model of combining clinic. And they even have a garden, their places with a garden. So I really strongly, um, your vision, your willingness to work together, given what we're all facing and the hurdles ahead, we got to feed each other. And this builds community faster than anything. So. Thank you, Nancy. Keep going. Thank you, Nancy. Yeah. Feeding people does bring people together, doesn't it? Yeah. Thank you. Hi. Dan Kahn, K-A-H-N. I'm just going to pile on the applause in support of this. Um, I don't have much more, uh, specialized thinking to add to it, but I appreciate all the good work and thinking that y'all have been doing, um, and supporting our local food systems, our local farmers, local healthy food and entrepreneurship opportunities is so key. And I, I really appreciate the depth and breadth with which y'all are considering this in terms of housing and transportation and economic development. So. Thank you. Thank you so much. Kali. Come on up. As a nurse, I'm really happy with the idea of making food available to people. I bet that modeling at Arbor is on Church Street, right on the north fringe, right on the north edge of central campus. So that's very different from our setting here. But, uh, I'm sure you can make it work and, uh, get John Nixon, the Black Farmers Association in and stock it up right away. Yeah. You'll have something great. Thanks. You'll have people get, get healthy food instead of the poison stuff that's in our supermarket. Thank you. All right. Anyone else? All right. Back to the board. Any further discussion? If we have kids that can sell lemonade from their yards, can they sell vegetables from their yard if they've grown? Just think about it. You know, um, if we're encouraging kids to grow in their yards, does that mean they could also sell from their yards? Yeah. They definitely do it if the city and the county don't know about it. That's right. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. No more discussion. All those in favor. Forget I said it. Forget I said it. Yes, they can. Forget it. No more discussion, Mr. Mayor on motion. I just sneezed. Okay. All those in favor on the county side, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, Anna, thank you for continuing, as Commissioner Engel said, to move that poll. That passes 4-0. Um, guys, I got to run to the Children's Trust, but we got public comment and we got commission comment. If you'll take the rain from here. Sure. And thank you all. Appreciate it. All right. Okay. Very good. All right. Well, since we're on to public comment, do we have any general public comment from anybody who wanted to speak to us on an item that's not on the agenda? Anybody? Going once? Going twice? Okay. I kind of addressed it in my prior comments here, but I'm, I'm so grateful to all of you and just want to express my gratitude for being a citizen here and the willingness of both boards to work together. Um, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and we are looking, even if, if everything went back to quote normal today, we are looking at long-term huge price increases, supply chain issues, and maybe $160 oil, um, and not having things available. So the work that you all are doing now, whether it's square foot gardening in the backyard, up to the farm stop and these other issues, um, I think is really, really critical. And I applaud you for continuing to keep that front and center despite all the budget challenges and other challenges. Um, and also I'm really, I'm hoping this is maybe a time that we can revive the idea that was starting to develop here in the mid-2000s with local investing and looking at how we can keep, not just our, we got to build up our food, have our local energy, but our money can stay here too. And the more that we have opportunities to, um, to invest together in our, in our community, um, we can really, we can make millions of dollars of difference in economic development, um, because every local dollar can translate into $4 or better. So I think people are going to be, um, really scared about what's happening to their portfolios, to their retirement funds. And I think there, and there are opportunities here where we can start to create opportunities to have pooled or different kinds of investments where we know what we're investing in and we build our community at the same time and create more resilient, resilience. Um, yeah. So I'm really excited this fall that maybe we can, um, start to explore that. Any other public comments? Okay. Hearing none, we'll close public comment. We'll go to the commission comments. Mayor, do you want the city to go first? Commissioner Willis. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. It's kind of a question, I would, since we were talking about GCRA today, um, there's no amendment that may be on the ballot in November. I think it's gonna be called amendment three, but I'm not exactly sure yet. Um, and I had questions about the funding, GCRA funding. I think people city and county have talked a lot about what out of the Lauren does and doesn't pay for. Um, and the whole community's gonna be talking about it, but we're making plans on GCRA dollars out into the future. And I know that we haven't discussed, I, the city commission, at least we haven't discussed that yet. So that's something I'll be talking to city staff about. But since both boards are here, I wanted to just bring that up as a, um, this large chunk of money where the city, you know, in essence, it's, it's from, it's from ad valorem taxes, correct? In the end, you know? And so it's example of what some people, um, in Tallahassee may call waste. And we're sitting here, we're like, we're literally trying to feed people. What do you mean? It's waste, right? We're literally building health clinics in, in, in places that don't have enough access to health clinics. We're building transportation and you know, they just get to say, Oh, surely there's all this waste. Um, I know cause we see our budget and I've seen the county's budget that we try really hard to do a lot. Some people say they don't support some of the extra stuff. Um, but for every one of those people, there are people in, in the city and in the county who say, I like Gainesville, I like Lachua County because you go the extra dollar. Um, and to miss Darren's point for them, that is their investment. They put their tax money and they, they invest cause they know we're gonna try to build community and, and to build local, you know, success and wealth of all of our residents. So, but I just wanted to bring that up cause it is something that I'm a little still unclear on how GCRA will be funded even to the end of our current. If the county loses a bunch of avalorm and the city loses a bunch of avalorm, whether these plans we already have on paper. Um, thank goodness we haven't bonded them out yet on the GCRA side. I don't think on the city side. Um, I don't think we bonded any of it out. Um, but yeah, so it's something to think about. Thank you. Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Richard Willis. No, no, no, no. Uh, yeah. I mean, so my understanding of that legislation right now without getting too deep into it is that we will still be allowed to basically the, what, what they ended up with was, and all the other things that cities and counties vote to do. So, yes, ad valorem should still be spendable, but, uh, you know, we'll see. We can always beat it too. Just a thought. Uh, any other public comment from city? Okay. All right. Question comment from the county. Mary Helen. I just had a very quick question. I saw that the school board had, uh, put, put off the vote for their, for the citizens' field. I didn't know if you all had any updates from, from that situation. We are waiting for, uh, for them to take action, so we can take action. I gotcha. So that's, that's the big piece of how you're developing that area there too. I didn't know if there had been any more movement across the street for the building there, the possibility of using that or not. So we haven't had any discussion about purchasing the Jones Edwards property. Okay. I just didn't know that it'd come into the plan, the bigger, the bigger plan there. We have a long list of things that we're committed to building on the northwest corner of that intersection. New things. New things. Yes. Um, but, but we have had no discussion about appropriating money to purchase that property. Okay. Okay. Private citizens have been discussing it. Right. I see. Okay. That's, that's, that's, um, that's, that's really all I have. Um, my, again, my concern too, is when, when that money is not coming in, like we're used to it coming in, we're also talking about not starting projects that have not been broken ground on yet. You know? So even though we have these plans for the future, um, particularly like the animal shelter, for instance, you know, that we have money set aside for that, but there is a possibility then if we have those funds cut and we have to focus on fire and police, then, you know, those projects that have not had, we have a broken ground on may have to wait. That's my only concern. I guess you all are looking at chopping, you know, the, the, the list too. We've already started dividing our list of what can wait and what we actually happen to have, so. We have it this year's budget to deal with first. That, that's what I mean. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's, that's part of the plan. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Alford? I don't have anything. Okay. Well, it sounds like we don't have any other things. I just want to say thank you to staff. I appreciate it. I know these meetings are always a lot to prepare for, um, with very little understanding of what's going to come at you. So we just really appreciate your energy and your time and the hard work that you put up. With that, we're adjourned. Very good. We're adjourned. Very good.