GAINESVILLE – The Gainesville City Council voted unanimously Tuesday evening to officially expand the boundaries of the Main Street Service District, but not everyone at the meeting was in agreement with the expansion.
Debra Harkrider of Gainesville is a member of the newly-formed Gainesville Business Coalition and said she was speaking for the group. She urged the council to postpone its vote on the resolution to expand the boundaries. “I’m here to ask you, on their behalf…that you not expand the Main Street Program borders at this point.”
“As you know,” Harkrider continued, “with the (downtown) construction they are struggling and are going to have probably some struggles for the next short while until we get things put back together in the downtown area.”
She added that some downtown merchants are also troubled about not being included in the decision-making process regarding certain downtown events, especially two recently relocated. (The annual Chicken Festival is moving to Longwood Park and Beach Bash is moving to Lake Lanier Olympic Park.)
“We have not been included in the decisions that have been made recently for the Main Street Program as to pulling off certain events…and feel that their businesses and their wants and needs are not being addressed.”
“I don’t think…that the Main Street Program is doing a good job in the area that they are serving now,” Harkrider said. “Maybe we can look at this a little further down the road.”
“We need to be sure that we don’t allow the downtown to become blighted again,” she said.
Early in 2010 the city council established Main Street Gainesville and the Main Street Advisory Board to develop downtown Gainesville as a center for government, service, professional, retail, cultural and religious activity.
City leaders say that the downtown area has grown rapidly and what is officially designated as downtown is ready to expand so additional businesses can take advantage of the services provided by Main Street Gainesville. Recently the Main Street Advisory Board agreed with the plan to expand.
The resolution approved Tuesday evening effectively extends the boundaries to include the Civic Center to the north; Brenau University to the east; the Midtown railroad tracks to the south; and Lake Lanier to the west.
This expansion mirrors the boundaries spelled out in the 2015 Comprehensive Plan approved by the city.
City Manager Bryan Lackey told council members in response to Harkrider’s comments, “While I understand she feels the Main Street group is not doing a good job, (her comments) are counter to the people who want to be a part of Main Street and want the boundaries to be expanded to be a part of all this.”
Lackey continued, “While there has been a lot of inconvenience over the past few months with the construction downtown, I think perhaps the folks are excited about the millions of dollars we have spent on our downtown over the past couple of years, and the millions we plan to spend over the next couple of years.”
“Each of you know that we all get complaints here that all we focus on is downtown,” Lackey reminded council members. “I do support what we are doing; I don’t back off the investments we are making downtown because we need our downtown to be strong and vibrant. But again, this change of the boundaries just increases that strength; it increases the people that want to be a part of the great things that are going on in our downtown.”
Gainesville Communications and Tourism Director Nikki Perry said after the meeting, “(This resolution) will reflect the public perception of what downtown Gainesville is. When people think downtown, they think of our central business district, our historic areas: historic Green Street, Brenau, and Midtown. All of those areas are what is in the general population’s idea of downtown, but our Main Street boundaries have not caught up with that.”
Perry said she sympathizes with the businesses on The Square that have suffered the most during construction and from the relocation of a pair of large annual events to other sites.
She then repeated what Lackey told the council earlier in the evening: “For every event that has left The Square we have replaced that with another event downtown.”
