Gainesville in November: Thelma Boltin's future, Heartwood, and GPD
November is a shortened month for us, but we have big decisions on the Thelma Boltin Center, as well as some local music highlights after a very musical October
That was one heck of a month in October. Between Tom Petty Weekend, Fest, Friends of the Library Sale, and Halloween it was a real highlight of everything Gainesville has to offer. November slows down in the City both for events and for us on the Commission, with only a few big decisions coming up and a shortened calendar with Thanksgiving.
First, Some Good News
The City of Gainesville’s Parks Recreation and Cultural Affairs Department received a perfect score on their reaccreditation. The years-long audit of the City of Gainesville came out from the state Auditor General and it’s a clean bill of health, aside from a few procedural cleanups. The legislature is probably going to continue making political hay of it1, but I’m incredibly proud of the work city staff did, and I think their work speaks for itself. We’re a stronger, more transparent, nimble, and more tightly run city government thanks to their hard work.
Residents could see as much as a 20% drop in their flood insurance thanks to the hard work of City staff and partners to get our community to a Class 6 National Flood Insurance Program Community Rating System (CRS) level. The Mayor released a cool “Gainesville History Mixtape” on Spotify, which is fun and I love seeing us highlight our local arts more.
The City is also moving forward on two exciting projects, albeit both in the very early stages. The Knot Rock Gym will be rehabilitating the industrial buildings south of Depot Park and turning them into a new rock gym, a skate shop, and a restaurant, with a skate park in front of the shop. It’s a great expansion of the Depot Park space that fits both the vibe and the usage of the Park.
We are also moving into the next stages of renovating Citizens Field and the MLK Center, which as I said is still at an early stage. The scale of that project remains to be determined, but we’re committed to updating and upgrading that area for a better sports and recreation complex, and now have expert analysis on what could work there from a regional sports perspective.
On the community side, Munecas has moved down to Fourth Avenue Foodpark in what was Sublime Tacos, as well as Gainesville’s first cider brewery, Dry Wrought Cider. Sublime Tacos will soon be opening at their new east side location. October was a packed month of events, but November will be exciting as well. We have the Downtown Festival and Art Show in downtown on November 18th. There’s the great Cane Boil and Fiddle Fest on November 25th at Morningside Nature Center, both events put on by our amazing cultural affairs staff.
Fest and Keys to the City
One of the highlights of my time in office happened on Friday, when a few hundred Festers joined us at City Hall to give a key to the City to an artist I’ve loved for many years, Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! She was bowed over by the honor, and her speech was inspiring and a great reminder of why so many of us love this city.
I've traveled the world over and I know for certain what a truly special place Gainesville is − and I know that you realize that, too. So thank you for everything you've taught me over the years, Gainesville. Thank you for giving me a place to belong when I was just a confused punk kid. Thank you for being a beacon of hope in Florida. Thank you for always giving me a place that I always look forward to returning to. And thank you for this honor, now let's Fest.
- Laura Jane Grace
In fact, the whole weekend was a great celebration of Gainesville music. Shortly after the Key ceremony Gainesville band “Less Than Jake” played their classic ska record “Hello Rockview” in its entirety, which was written and recorded at Mirror Image Studios in what is now “Heartwood Soundstage”.
And Fest weekend ended late Sunday with Laura Jane Grace playing an acoustic set to an at-capacity crowd at Vivid Music Hall, dressed in a police Halloween costume and wearing her new “Key to the City” as a giant gold necklace. It was a much-needed celebratory weekend for our city and the art that has come out of it.
The Future of the Thelma Boltin Center
The biggest decision we have this month is on the future of the Thelma Boltin Center. On November 16th the Gainesville City Commission will be deciding what the future is for this historic building in Duckpond. The Thelma Boltin Center was built in 1941 with New Deal money as an entertainment center for service members and was handed over to the City after the war to be the “Gainesville Recreation Center”, which it has been used for ever since.
In 2022 the Gainesville City Commission voted to completely demolish the structure based on a report by Sputo and Lambert Engineering that found deep damage to the building and an incredibly expensive rehabilitation. The report made clear that the Thelma Boltin Center is in very rough shape. It’s built in a FEMA flood plain with unreinforced walls and an undersized foundation. Like most World War II buildings it has some parts that were built very well and others that weren’t. Over the years those have deteriorated, and now any rehabilitation is going to be very expensive.
Fast forward to 2023 and the building has, thankfully, not been demolished, so with a new commission in place staff came forward to us with four options.
Demolish the building and build something else in its place
Completely preserve the building in its current state
Do a hybrid option to keep the historic character while better utilizing the building
Just fix the roof and ignore the underlying issues
Cost isn’t really the deciding factor here, each of these options are about the same price2, $5.5 - $6.5 million. This decision is more of a push and pull between two truths about the Thelma Boltin Center:
It is an historic building with its own unique charm that is located in a historic district
It is an historic building designed for a particular time period, and the needs of that time period don’t make much sense anymore. The wing is mostly small offices and showers for service members, the stage is small with no green room. It isn’t a very usable building, and as a result has only been used for niche events for over a decade now.
At a cost of $6 million this will be the largest project in the history of Wild Spaces and Public Places, so it needs to be done well.
That’s why the Historic Preservation Board, after months of back and forth with city staff, agreed to a “hybrid option” that retains the historic character while enhancing its usability. They put five conditions in place that allowed city staff to expand walls and demolish the wing, so long as the “historic character” of the building, which they determined as mainly the stage and auditorium, were preserved and rehabilitated to Department of Interior Standards, with a new wing that fits the historic character of the space under those same guidelines. All of this would be reviewed and approved by the Historic Preservation Board before construction takes place.
With those changes, the Thelma Boltin Center will be more than just a little used historic building, but can now be used for smaller weddings, yoga classes, children’s programming, theatre performances, more intimate community meetings, dance classes, or whatever the community has needs for over the next 100 years this building will exist.
The Old Gainesville Depot as Inspiration
My personal favorite preservation in the city is the Old Gainesville Depot at Depot Park. It is a perfect mix of historic character and usability. In it, you are truly sitting in the original train depot that caused Gainesville to become a city. It isn’t a “rebuild” of the historic train station, it is the train station, and you can feel that authenticity when you walk inside.
But it wasn’t a pure “preservation” project either, as some are advocating for with Thelma Boltin, it was a “rehabilitation” project. Some walls were demolished, many parts of the building changed, and now it is both an honor to our history as well as a usable space where I can get a burger with my daughter while she rides an animatronic alligator. One day, when she gains enough attention span, she can learn about the history of the building as someone who has grown up using it. I think that is really special.
And that is my hope for the Thelma Boltin Center. The Historic Preservation Board’s recommendations were right on track for that, ensuring historic preservation was blended with usability. The devil, of course, is in the details, and so on the 16th I’ll be asking lots of questions and making requests to ensure the historic character is better retained while making sure it’s a space our community can really use and make something special. That to me means retaining the stage and auditorium under “rehabilitation” principles while allowing the mostly unusable and far-less-historic wing to become usable, but always maintaining rehabilitation standards for new construction while doing that. We’ll see if that passes.
Quarterly Updates
Thelma Boltin is the only big item we have this month, the rest are our quarterly updates from the GCRA, American Rescue Plan spending, our housing department and the Gainesville Police Department. I won’t get into all of them, but the crime statistics are always worth going into:
Gainesville Police Department Updates
The Gainesville Police Department is focusing a lot on crime data for these presentations, which is something the Commission has been really pushing them for. Our hope is to compare ourselves over time and to other cities. If you’re into data you can see the full report here. For Q3 of 2023 crime in total is up 8.3% from this time in 2022, but down 7.8% from 2020. Essentially, crime is bouncing around up and down year-to-year, but this year is an up year from last year. This is true of violent crime (up 7.3%) and property crimes (up 8.3%).
To put all this into perspective Mayor Harvey Ward has selected a series of “peer cities” to Gainesville to compare ourselves to for these statistics, all south-eastern college towns so we can understand our statistics to theirs. Here is how we compare with them in the year-to-date.
Gainesville is comparatively a relatively low-crime town, which comes up again and again in statistics when you compare us to these or other cities in our area. As a college town we have more theft than usual, but less murders or serious violent crime. Still, crime has risen in recent years and our residents are feeling the impact of that. This is an issue we need to stay on top of and ensure we are a city where everyone can feel safe, no matter where they live.
Small Business of the Month
I’m going to venture outside of District 4 for this one and highlight “Heartwood Soundstage” because they’re at a critical juncture in their business and could use some extra TLC right now. Heartwood is one of the great new gems of Gainesville, a rehabilitated lumber yard and music studio that has booked some of the best music in Gainesville while delivering world-class sound quality unmatched anywhere else.
Dave Melosh, the owner, is making the leap into booking more national acts, booking some shows that are a delight to have in Gainesville. They have an incredible roster of acts upcoming, including some of the greatest outlaw country bands in the world right now: Mike & the Moonpies, Whitey Morgan & the 78’s, Daniel Donato, and Cody Canada & The Departed, all in early December3.
Gainesville has been in desperate need of a medium-sized venue for larger touring acts, but they’re expensive to book and this is a big leap for Heartwood financially. If you like live music check out their website and find an artist that strikes your fancy to help support Heartwood as they make this new investment in our music community.
Local Music of the Month
The last night of Fest 21 ended with a very Gainesville celebration in the Streetery in front of the Bull, with Rancho La Chua and Whiskey & Co. playing to a large crowd, and Laura Jane Grace playing after at Vivid.
Rancho La Chua brought the house down with their foot-stompin’ folk music, which is no small feat for a punk festival crowd. Rancho La Chua is sort of a Gainesville super group of musicians who have been in a who’s who of other bands over the years. It includes Chelsea Carnes, Jon Gaunt, Bobby Brown, Will Dueease, Mike Collins, and singer Heather Tabor. It’s insanely fun music made by insanely talented musicians, many of whom work for the City’s Cultural Affairs Department. If you see them out and playing it’s worth going, it’s a fun time and it gets the whole crowd dancing.
What else is new?
The “just fix the roof” option is cheaper, at around $450,000, but leaves us in a rough place with that building, and will almost certainly cost us more in the long run when it continues to deteriorate.
I’m a sucker for outlaw country music and am incredibly excited to see Mike & The Moonpies, which has been my most listened-to band as of late. But truly all of these bands are worth seeing.