There’s good news to report about Gainesville’s ‘downtown jewel,” Sweetwater Branch Park.
The City has erected a sign with colorful, appealing foliage painted on it.
Of course, other than the sign, there isn’t much by way of appeal or color with which to lure visitors to Sweetwater Branch.
There hasn’t been for many years.
Heck, you might have to go all the way back to Feb. 14, 1864, to pinpoint the last time there was any sort of organized activity at all on the banks of Sweetwater Branch.
That’s when the Yankees and the Rebs fought a Civil War skirmish there.
I pointed out as much in a column I wrote for The Sun in 2022.
This when GNV’s newly minted Downtown Strategic Plan urged the City to “Reimagine Sweetwater Park as a signature public green space in the urban core of Gainesville.”
Listen, many of us thought we were getting a “jewel” of a park back in 2005, when it was announced with great fanfare that Sweetwater Park would be a “botanical wonderland.
Didn’t happen. The city didn’t follow through.
In fact, throughout the years, City Hall — just across the street — studiously ignored most of the recommendations made in a long-forgotten Sweetwater Park master plan.
Which is why the park today hosts few or no activities, and is largely unused, perceived as unsafe and frequently ill-maintained.
Did I mention the park sign with colorful foliage?
There’s that.
Anyway, I took a walk through Sweetwater Branch last Friday. After which I went to Mayor Harvey Ward’s weekly press conference.
To ask him what City has done to implement the three-plus-year old Strategic Plan’s Idea 3: Turn Sweetwater Branch Park into a “Downtown Jewel.”
“The budget realities of 2022 are different the budget realities since the middle of 2023,” Ward said.
And that’s certainly true enough. It might even be persuasive. Except for one thing.
The City’s less-than-benign neglect of Sweetwater Branch goes back – not just three years – but for decades uncounted.
As far as I have been able to tell, the park has never been so much as a blip on Park & Rec’s radar screen.
Listen, conditions that are allowed to exist as a matter of routine at Sweetwater Branch – piles of belongings, litter strewn about, people sleeping in the bushes, a creek choked by a jungle of weeds – wouldn’t be tolerated for five minutes at any other City park.
Not at Depot. Not at Massey nor Cora Roberson. Certainly not at Sweetwater Preserve.
The Mayor pointed out that since renovations began at City Hall – and with work about to commence at The Streetery – some downtown street people may have migrated to Sweetwater Branch as a matter of course.
“People live wherever they can live,” he said.
Again, true enough I suppose.
But here’s the thing.
Sweetwater Branch Creek is, literally, GNV’s first creek. It is where GNV first took root. It is GNV’s flowing, liquid heart.
And the park itself is a long, narrow strip of green in a downtown that is otherwise known for its concrete, steel, glass and asphalt.
The City has all sorts of excuses for its history of abusive neglect of GNV’s first creek and downtown’s longest stretch of green.
But who will speak for Sweetwater Branch Park? Anybody?
FreeGNV 