Stephen Foster neighborhood

Gainesville City Commissioners voted 4-1 on Thursday to change the method by which their salaries are calculated, nearly doubling their pay.

On the street adjacent, the sounds of the trencher digging can be clearly heard, while smoke and cement smells are potent.

The scorned smell that wafts from Cabot-Koppers Superfund site on Northwest 23rd Avenue in Gainesville is from the excavation of the odorous pine tar still in the ground where charcoal facilities used to be on the Cabot Corp.’s 50-acre portion of the site.

County officials within the past month approached the property owner, Beazer East, about the idea of leasing or selling the 86-acre parcel just north of NW 23rd Avenue.

A University of Florida class project is playing a part in helping an east-side Gainesville community decide how it might best improve the Cabot-Koppers property.

Residents voiced their opinions for future plans in the Northwest Urban Core neighborhood in an open forum at Stephen Foster Elementary on Wednesday. They expressed their concerns and representatives from GRU, Parks and Recreation, and more spoke about the neighborhood's future development possibilities.

Several roads in the Stephen Foster neighborhood will soon receive long-awaited renovations.Gainesville’s City Commission authorized the use of money from…

The Cabot-Koppers wood treatment plant became an EPA Superfund site in 1983 after dioxins contaminated the soil and underground aquifer. Now that cleanup of residential property was completed in November, the residents look toward the future.

The Environmental Protection Agency is doubling up crews to clean up polluted soil in the Stephen A. Foster neighborhood.

Beazer East, Inc., a wood treatment company responsible for potentially-cancerous soil contamination in a neighborhood of the Gainesville area, began soil remediation at their pilot property at 436 NW 30th Ave. on Monday.