A new parking garage, originally part of a plan approved when Nokia sold the most popular phones, is coming to Gainesville.
On Tuesday, the Development Review Board voted to approve a parking garage that’s part of a development plan originally proposed in 2001 and revised in 2023 for the Alachua County Court Complex located at 220 & 376 S. Main St. and 118 SW 4th Ave.
The meeting started with Jason Simmons, a planner on the city’s sustainable development staff, presenting the logistics of the garage.
“The project began with the need for the courthouse functions to expand,” he said.
In his presentation, Simmons said the building would take up over six and a half acres of land within the zoning lines of the court complex. The building will be around 60 feet tall, will include 500 parking spaces and “approximately 54,000 square feet of impervious area.” It would replace the surface parking lot at the courthouse.
In addition to Simmons, EDA Consultants Director of Planning Clay Sweger discussed the background of the garage.
“This garage was part of planned development that has been in place on the city zoning map since 2001,” he said. “That was around the time the criminal courthouse was built.”
He went on to talk about the requirements that must also be fulfilled alongside the parking garage, one of which became the main topic for discussion.
Sweger said the proposed development zoning requires an urban walkway connection between SW Second Street and S. Main Street.
“That’s what it provides,” he said in an interview. “It’s designed to meet the city standards for street trees, pedestrian street lighting, wide sidewalks.”
However, not everyone shares Sweger’s confidence in the project. Some residents at the meeting don’t agree with the idea of a garage being built in downtown Gainesville.

Rick Fabiani is one of the concerned citizens. He got to the podium and urged the board members to make the company reconsider the garage.
“The way the design is structured is going to impact, you know, the fabric of downtown,” he said. “It’s going to take basically what is a more open street plan and turn it into a six-acre concrete block.”
Fabiani also said one of his main problems with the design was that he thinks it's simply too old.
“Like he [Sweger] said, the idea is from 2001,” he said. “Times have changed and the public’s taste in how buildings look has changed as well. It doesn’t fit today’s standards in my opinion.”
His other concerns deal with how the construction of the garage would affect him personally.
“I own some property near there,” Fabiani said. “I live only a block away, and I work down there. A lot of people are trying to make downtown more walkable, a lot more livable, and my view personally is that a six-acre block of government buildings in the middle of downtown is not exactly more livable and walkable.”
After other public comments, the board members began deliberating about access to the garage and the urban walkway and safety getting to those areas.
After hearing responses from the EDA members present, the board unanimously approved the garage on a condition that EDA must have an additional sidewalk connection at the southeast corner of the garage connecting Southwest Fourth Avenue to the urban walkway.
Sweger said construction on the parking garage will begin within a year. He also hinted at two more major development proposals coming before the board soon, though details remain unknown.