When we turned our backs on Hogtown Creek

I went to Creekside Mall to check out the Acrosstown Repertory Theater’s new home.

Which, naturally, made me think about a conversation I had with Bob Rowe more than 30 years ago.

Bob was the Gainesville developer behind Haile Plantation. But the conversation I remembered was about Hogtown Creek.

Or more specifically, why we ended up turning our backs on GNV’S most iconic creek in precisely the area where it runs closest to large numbers of people.

Even though GNV is a city of creeks, most of our waterways are tucked away in narrow, winding, woods that are not widely visible to passersby.

The exception begins just north of University and east of 8th avenues, where Hogtown creek emerges from the Loblolly Park, follows University Ave. for a stretch and then turns south before ducking for cover again behind Camelot Apartments.

It also happens to be some of the widest stretches of Hogtown, thanks to drainage improvements intended to keep 8th and University from flooding. (Said improvements made by FDOT, which then proceeded to put GNV’s creek off limits.)

Getting back to Bob Rowe. He once told me how puzzled he was that virtually all of the buildings that line the creek along that commercial stretch were constructed with their backs facing the creek.

As a result, the spaces between the buildings and the creeks are largely given over to car storage and garbage dumpsters.

Consider Creekside Mall, home to the new ART theater. Presumably so named because it sits, you know, alongside a creek. But you can’t even see Hogtown Creek from the mall. This thanks to a parking lot, a row of garbage repositories, a barrier of trees and jungle-like overgrowth.

A tale of two restaurants

Consider Las Carretas, the latest in a series of restaurants that have bounced in and out of the Creekside Mall over the years. It has a very nice outdoor seating area overlooking the scenic front parking lot.

Las Carretas stands in stark contrast to another Mexican restaurant I am familiar with. This one in far away Perth, Ontario, where Jill and I have made summer visits.

Mex & Co. is a downtown fixture in Perth. It sits on the Tay River – which at that point is not much wider than Hogtown Creek – and the view makes its waterside outdoor dining patio a popular destination.

Across the street from Las Carretas, a double row of parked cars separates Mildred’s Big City Food from its distant creekside view. And across 8th Avenue from Mildred’s, only Burrito Famous has figured out that there is an advantage to be had in connecting its customers to its creek neighbor.

Anyway Bob Rowe was intrigued enough about the potential to reunite the creek to its creekside businesses that he commissioned a group of UF students (landscape architecture, if I recall) to do a set of visionary drawings showing the potential for creekside dining, entertainment, promenades and the like. The students even envisioned the possibility of raising the water level to accommodate tubers and paddle boats.

Which is why, standing amid all the parked cars separating Creekside Mall from its creekside I recalled Bob Rowe. Bob was no raze-pave-and-build developer. Haile Plantation won awards for following sustainable and environmental friendly best practices.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before some smart entrepreneur figures out that there is gold in that there hidden creek. Somebody’s gonna modify some of those buildings to orient toward Hogtown and open…oh, I dunno…a brewery, waterfront cafes, a 4th Avenue Style food park. The possibilities are endless.

Bob Rowe could not imagine why his fellow builders chose to turn their backs on Hogtown Creek and settle for nondescript urban strip malls that look exactly like thousands of other nondescript American urban strip malls. (Although I do not discount the possibility that city ‘planners’ made that decision for them.)

It makes no sense to me, either.