A neighborhood in the heart of Gainesville needs to be revived, but city officials shouldn’t stop there.
The Stephen Foster neighborhood should be a highly sought-after place to live, given its proximity to downtown and the University of Florida campus. But as efforts to clean up the polluted Koppers Superfund site bordering the neighborhood have dragged on for decades, parts of the area have fallen into disrepair.
With the cleanup finally underway, overdue attention is being paid to the neighborhood. A study found that a more than 1,000-acre area that includes the neighborhood and Koppers site meets the state definition for blight, the first step needed to establish a community redevelopment area there.