Turns out two gators have been standing sentry over the Gainesville hotel that never was.
Who knew?
“I’ve been driving and walking past the Seagle building for 58 years, right?” Mayor Harvey Ward said. But it wasn’t until John Fleming, managing partner of Trimark Properties, gave Ward a tour of the 100-year old Seagle building that the two metal Gators perched over Gainesville’s first ‘skyscraper’ were pointed out to him.
They had been easy to miss.
The Seagle hadn’t been painted in decades. Their notice was further marred by a shabby green entrance canopy that had seen better days. After long years of neglect, Fleming said, the twin gators got lost in the “faded paint and the mold.”
No more. The canopy is gone, soon to be replaced by a modern glass and steel canopy. The Seagle sports a fresh new coat of paint replete with trimming. Hundreds of windows have been replaced or refurbished.
And Fleming had the gators painted in gold leaf and highlighted with a dark background to make them stand out.
Just one small detail in an extensive renovation of a Gainesville landmark, listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, whose original construction began one century ago this past February.
“I don’t know what it looked like in 1937, when they finally finished it, but it’s gonna look better than it ever has,” Fleming promises. “It’s gonna be solid, and it’s gonna be here for another 50 years.”
Renovation, or reinvention?
It is a renovation, a reinvention really, that before it’s all finished, may amount to a $20 million upgrade – including private investment, condo association special assessments and, not to forget, nearly $150,000 in Gainesville Community Redevelopment grants.
“I’m super happy that we’re a partner, a small partner, in making the Seagle building a success,” Ward said. “It’s looking better now than it has been since at least the 1970s.”
Not a bad second act for a building that St. Petersburg developer W. McKee Kelley originally poured $600,000 into with the intention of opening a Gainesville Dixie Hotel.
Alas, he ran out of money, what with the depression and all. And his dream hotel sat there, a University Avenue eyesore, until businesswoman Georgia Seagle finally paid to complete it in 1937.
Whereupon she donated it to the University of Florida.
Over the following decades, UF used the building for various purposes: To conduct weapons research during World War II. And to house the Museum of Florida History, which put an ancient dugout canoe on display in the lobby.
The Seagle goes condo
It wasn’t until the early 1980s that the building passed back into private hands. The Seagle went condo. New residential units were developed, including a rooftop penthouse complete with hot tub and dynamite views of UF and the city.
And the members-only Heritage Club moved into the Seagle’s art deco-inspired ground floors. Its business plan? To be Gainesville’s premier Place To See And Be Seen.
All well and good, until the Heritage Club went out of business shortly into the decade of the ‘90s.
“That was probably the last time anybody did anything to the Seagle,” Fleming said. By the time Trimark came along, “there were termites in all the original windows. They were being eaten alive and leaking.”
If the outside of the Seagle is already looking brand spanking new, the inside is still very much a work in progress.
Trimark owns six of the Seagle’s 11 floors. And floors one-through-six are in various stages of flux, with modern office suits and luxury apartments – some with their own rooftop patios – taking shape.
Much of the bottom floor remains gutted – stripped to its bare brick walls, with hanging wires and exposed ducts.
That floor is intended to, one day, house a 2,600 sq. foot restaurant, a coffee-sandwich shop and a bar.
Top to bottom improvements
Other improvements include a new roof, modern plumbing, repaired elevators and a new high-capacity pump to replace a failing antique that had threatened to cut off water to the upper floors.
In the lobby there are still traces of the old building’s former grandeur, albeit with peeling paint on the ceiling beams and signs of mold and water damage here and there.
Still, the gleaming, if somewhat time-scarred elevator doors bespeak of better times. Its brass surface embossed with “SBUF” (Seagle Building University of Florida).
Trimark owns 70 percent of the Seagle. But to move ahead with restoration, Fleming needed buy-in from the building’s condo association.
“We had one elevator running and two pumps down in the basement to supply water. One hadn’t worked in years and the other was about to go,” Fleming said.
He called an association meeting and told owners “please do realize when that pump goes down, nobody has water from the seventh floor and above.”
Ultimately condo owners approved special assessments to fix the elevators, modernize the plumbing and restore the Seagle’s common areas.
“I thought it was going to be a big hurdle to get people to go along,” said Ryan Frankel, who owns the penthouse and an apartment on the 10th floor, “but honestly, it went really smoothly. They knew the building needed these things. Now I think most people are joyous about seeing everything that’s being done.”
Craig Carter, the Realtor who brokered the Seagle sale, said Trimark is one of the few local companies capable of tackling a project of this scale.
“I’ve been in love with that building since I listed it. It’s just gorgeous,” said Carter. “I showed it several times to people who said it would cost more to fix the building than it would to tear it down and build a new one,’’
“I needed John Fleming. He’s the only person I could think of who would say, ‘I love it enough to fix it.’”
Indeed, Fleming is no stranger to the challenges of historic restoration. Over the years Trimark has restored something like 75 aging Gainesville homes and apartment buildings, some of them dating back to the 1930s. Among them are old “Gainesville chert” houses, distinctive for their with locally quarried limestone exteriors.
Boarded-up First Baptist is next
Trimark also owns the century-old First Baptist Church – long boarded up and awaiting its own restoration – located directly across the street from the Seagle.
“As soon as we’re done here we’re gonna figure out what to do with” First Baptist, Fleming said. “We can only do one at a time because they are super-complicated projects.”
As for the Seagle building, Fleming said there was never any question of tearing it down and starting over.
“It’s very easy to go out to a 20-acre site that used to be a field and develop it,” he said. “But it’s not really fun, it’s kind of boring. We like to do stuff that’s a little trickier and a little harder.
“This is the biggest historical renovation we’ve done to date. I love this building, and we’re giving it back to Gainesville.”
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