The Gainesville Plan Board voted Thursday to allow Persimmon Elementary School to build in Millhopper, to let the airport add a fuel tank and to recommend more communication for large planning items.
Persimmon Early Learning Academy already serves the Gainesville area off NW 6th Street, but Bonnie Bowman, owner of Persimmon, said the business plans to expand with an elementary school in Millhopper (2211 NW 40th Terrace) where a current daycare exists.
She said the current Early Learning Academy could then add daycare and infant spaces once the elementary school portion has a separate location.
City staff recommended allowed an elementary school as an allowed use within the Foxfield Planned Development. Staff also set conditions to limit the capacity to 135 students and hours of operation from 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Staff said these conditions mirror the capacity and hours currently at the daycare.
The plan board voted unanimously in favor of staff’s recommendation.
The plan board also approved a 30,000-gallon jet-air fuel tank to be installed at Gainesville Regional Airport. The airport lies within the tertiary zone of the Murphree Wellfield Management Zone, forcing a special permit to store hazardous materials.
The site already has several tanks there, and a site plan will need to return to finalize the project.
Lastly, Peggy Carr and Kim Tanzer presented options to improve communication with residents over major development projects or changes to the land development code. The goal is to go beyond what the state of Florida requires.
Tanzer, a member of Gainesville Neighborhood Voices, said that small, single-site developments currently require more public notice than major changes to the land development code—like the single-family zoning reforms that sparked citizen engagement and the creation of Gainesville Neighborhood Voices. She said the group wants the same neighborhood meeting requirements for both, along with more outreach options via text, email, newsletters and other outreach.
Carr and Tanzer came before the plan board in June 2024 with the idea and have spent the last nine months refining the process.
They recommended holding standing neighborhood input meetings in each of the four districts twice a year. Any development that impacts more than 5% of the city’s area would be required to be present during these meetings, but only once per district.
Tanzer said these meetings would have multiple proposals and provide a one-stop forum for community members to learn and get engaged to then track the different projects.
Nathan Chan, a city planner, said the city had around 14 projects that came before the plan board from January 2023 through June 2024 that would meet the 5% of the city’s area requirement and trigger going to one of these meetings.
However, Chan and city staff recommended not moving forward with the approach. City staff also recommended not creating new requirements for notifying people through text, social media or newsletters.
He said staff would want to explore email and website options that could be implemented through internal process changes.
Board members asked about state requirements, and staff said the state only sets the bare minimum required of cities for these large development projects—legal notices in a newspaper or county website.
Board members said the minimum requirement is hardly worth it and noted how hard it can be to engage people. Member Robert Ackerman said he’s long been in favor of more robust notifications, but he said it’s not easy to do. The current proposal, he said, hadn’t convinced him that it would work, and it might slow down important issues.
Developers have told the plan board before that mailed notices required for single-site developments also seem ineffective.
The plan board voted to approve staff’s recommendation to not move forward with the meetings but to include definitions within the code. Board member Bobby Mermer also included in the motion a request that the City Commission explore expanding the channels it uses for notices.