East Gainesville needs more housing and more conservation land
Near the boundaries of East Gainesville, a developer wants to build houses and put land into conservation, which has provoked a battle.
I’d like to protect more spaces that look like the photo above. I think a lot of folks in Florida would like that. Trails and nature preserves are very popular. In Alachua County, we’ve done a pretty good job at making sure some of our land gets put into conservation. And I know that both the city and county actively look for ways to conserve more of our natural spaces. But I also think sometimes, within the public especially, we conflate every undeveloped piece of land with conservation land.
Most times when you see an undeveloped piece of land anywhere in Florida, it’s not that the land is protected in some way. A landowner, and yes much of it is privately owned, has decided the land isn’t worth the cost and effort to develop into housing or commercial property yet, the landowner hasn’t found a buyer who thinks it is worth the cost and effort to build on, or both. If we have the opportunity take at least some of that land, especially when it lies near or outside the boundary of an urban area, and put it in conservation, we generally should be pushing for that outcome.
In Alachua County, there’s a proposal to develop a decent chunk of land at the eastern outer edge of the urban cluster into 149 single family homes. Largely because of its demographics, East Gainesville/East Alachua County has historically been neglected by city and county officials and by private developers. But right now, a developer with a good track record of building entry level homes is pushing to build much needed houses in the area. The tradeoff is that the land the company wants to build on is currently wild. However, in the county’s zoning map, this land is not under conservation. Much of it is already zoned for single family houses with the rest zoned for agriculture. A developer could come in and build homes on this land without a public hearing because they would be using the land as it’s intended under the current zoning. This developer wants to use the agriculture land and in exchange, put 26 acres of the land into conservation.
Weighing this out, it’s a great deal for Alachua County and the residents of the area. The east side gets some much needed new housing, which will hopefully reverse decades of population loss in the area. Increasing the population is likely the only way that a grocery store owner would want to open a new store in the area. Increasing the population will also mean greater county attention on repairing some of the roads and infrastructure there. That part of Alachua County already has existing water/sewer/GRU hookups too, so unlike the houses that are much closer to Newnans Lake, the residents of these new homes won’t be using septic systems for their plumbing.
For preservationists, 26 acres of land that was previously zoned for single family homes gets rezoned as conservation land. Being on the Gainesville City Plan Board, I can tell you that once land is zoned conservation in Alachua County, it is very difficult to get that zoning changed. The bar is very high and the opposition to changing conservation land is very fierce at the planning staff, board, commission, and public level and for good reasons. We love our wild spaces in Alachua County.
The best way to protect these wild spaces is to put that land under conservation. If left empty but without any legal protections, that land just east of Gainesville will be developed eventually. The Gainesville metro area continues to grow and the west side of Alachua County is getting increasingly congested. Eventually, a developer is going to build out east, but they won’t be as likely as this one to be thoughtful with their design and put some land into conservation.