As the city of Gainesville considers establishing a new community redevelopment area in the Stephen Foster neighborhood in north Gainesville, a debate is growing over whether another CRA has improved so much that it should be ended.
It’s hard to determine one common denominator that can be measured to see if a redevelopment area has been successful, said Sarah Vidal-Finn, interim director of the Gainesville Community Redevelopment Agency.
Her team thinks of success as the point when private investment is self-sustaining without CRA incentives, and they’re seeing that now in one of Gainesville’s four redevelopment districts: the College Park/University Heights CRA.
Gainesville’s four CRAs — College Park/University Heights, Downtown, Eastside and Fifth Avenue/Pleasant Street — are the only ones the city has ever had, Vidal-Finn said. But a conversation has been percolating over the past couple years regarding whether the College Park CRA should be ended sooner than planned given its perceived success.