How GNV is Salvatore Cumella?
Well, he wasn’t born and raised here. But neither is Cumella a stranger in this strange land we call GNV.
While interviewing for his new job as director of the Matheson Historical Museum, Cumella undoubtedly scored some points for his inside knowledge of distant town lore.
That interview took place in the Matheson’s former church building – which began existence as the Gainesville Gospel Tabernacle – across University Avenue from the museum.
“I told them ‘in this very room, I had my 21st birthday,’” he recalled.
Those of us who have been around for a while still, like Cumella, have fond memories of dining at the Melting Pot – for years, beginning in the early 1980s, one of the classiest restaurants in town. This thanks partially to its elegant, old Gospel Tabernacle-era ambiance.
Cumella is a graduate of UF’s Historic Preservation Program. He was a GNV city planner for a spell before leaving to take a senior historic preservation position in…I gotta say it…historic Fernandina Beach.
A town that takes its history quite seriously indeed.
All of which is to say that the guy certainly appears to have the chops to oversee the Matheson’s Mission No. 1: Preserve and protect GNV’s history.
Mark Barrow, a museum founder, is certainly impressed with its new director. “I think he’s gonna be great. He’s a history guy.
Shortly after Cumella took up his new duties “I spent about two hours talking to him. We went over the whole history” of the museum “and talked about what needed to be done.”
And you can’t accuse Cumella of lacking ambition. As his first major initiative, literally weeks after moving in, Cumella launched a capital campaign with the goal of raising $200,000.
That’s no small change for a museum that has been running on a shoestring budget for most of its existence.
The campaign is intended to help finance badly needed renovations of the historic Matheson House. One of the three oldest surviving homes in GNV, the house has been steadily deteriorating under the ravages of wind, water, mold and – yes – neglect.
“I really feel like (the Matheson House) is an integral part of the museum,” he told me. “And it really needs to be a showpiece.”
(Shameless self-promotional moment: I just wrote a piece for The Sun about the campaign to restore the Matheson House. So keep an eye out for it.)
Not that there aren’t other items of business to occupy Cumella’s attention. On the day I visited him, plywood was covering a broken front window of the museum. “There was a fight between two homeless gentlemen,” he said. “We’ve had to call the police a couple of times” due to disturbances in Sweetwater Branch Park.
If the park – the Matheson’s neighbor – remains little more than a gathering place for street people it is largely due to continuing City neglect. A much-touted Downtown Strategic Plan calls for turning the park into a showcase. But so far there is little indication that anything new is happening there.
Sweetwater branch itself remains little more than a weed-choked, garbage-accumulating drainage ditch. The library still uses its portion of the creekside as a parking lot that would be illegal if it were in private ownership. And the park itself is little used and mostly deserted, saved for the sort of “gentlemen” who are apt to settle their differences with rocks.
“They’re still working on that,” says Barrow, who for decades has been pleading with the City to improve Sweetwater Branch. “Creek restoration is not a major project ” so far as he can determine.
Cumella said he has meetings coming up with City officials to discuss the park. He’s also been talking with a group of UF architectural students “who have been tasked with figuring out how to activate the whole linear park” plan.
Which is to say that time passes but hope forever springs eternal. For both the historic Matheson House and for Sweetwater Branch Park.
Good luck to the Matheson’s new director.
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