by Diane Siskin
posted June 19, 2008
Many people recognize Gainesville, Florida as the home of the University of Florida. It is the home of the winning Gators football team and the location of the state’s largest institution of higher learning.
Fewer people know that the city was chosen the No. 1 “best place to live’’ in the 2007 edition of “Cities Ranked & Rated: More Than 400 Metropolitan Areas Evaluated in the U.S. and Canada’’ by Bert Sperling.
In April of this year, Gainesville was also awarded another accolade. According to the Close to Home column in USA Today, the city offers a well-insulated housing market “which avoids high and scary lows.’’
So what makes this city in north-central Florida so appealing? It is not on the coast and it doesn’t even boast of lakes or other waterways.
It offers a downtown undergoing revitalization.
It is home to an enormous state-of-the-art workout facility, Gainesville Health and Fitness Center on Newberry Road, which remains open 24 hours a day.
And, of course, for younger generations the University of Florida and all it entails with its educational and sports opportunities is a major draw. The university’s campus provides cultural and recreational resources and four hospitals to serve area residents of all ages.
So this livable city offers quite a lot for many different reasons. This year SmartMoney.com picked it as the No. 1 area in which to retire.
When we last visited on a spring weekend the city was an easy sell.
The weather was beautiful. The large trees lining many of the streets around the university were laden with moss creating a natural arbor.
The downtown was hosting a spring arts festival. This same festival, featuring artists, food vendors and live entertainment, last year had drawn more than 130,000 visitors.
While on the same Saturday just a few miles away hundreds of students were taking part in a campus UF dance marathon to benefit patients of Shands Children’s Hospital and the Children’s Miracle Network. On the Gator football field hundreds of athletes were participating in a sports day competition.
Currently one of the most important attributes of Gainesville is that the city is pushing a campaign to address global warming. Two years ago the Gainesville Regional Utilities was considering building a coal-fired power plant that probably would have greatly increased greenhouse emissions. Instead GRU is now developing a 100-megawatt biomass fuel plant, which will be fueled by wood and possibly garbage, according to the utility’s chief strategic planner Ed Regan.
The Alliance for Climate Protection’s campaign is intended to educate the public about climate change and is urging lawmakers to take action. “GRU is voluntarily working to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to levels outlined in the Kyoto Protocol — an international climate-change treaty (that the U.S. has not yet ratified), but looks to reduce carbon emissions seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012,’’ added Mr. Regan.
The utility is also looking into other things such as a new solar utility to install solar panels on buildings all across town and then distribute chilled water to cool buildings. The GRU is also looking into a switch to more natural gas water heaters for residents and facilities.
“Gainesville wants to be a hub for the solar industry,’’ said Mr. Regan, whose son Kevin graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
The Gainesville forecast for the future seems to be bright and filled with endless possibilities.
(Diane "Cookie" Siskin is the former travel editor for the Chattanooga Free Press. She now lives in Florida with her husband, Charles. She can be reached at cookie@gnt.net)
| Dining Out | Business | Movies | Focus | About Us |
| Church | Living Well | Memories | Outdoors | Real Estate | Student Scene | Travel |