In the winter of 1980, Amber Waters went to her first concert to see The Eagles and Jimmy Buffett play at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
Back then, she said, what is now an 88,000-seat stadium was nothing more that two sets of bleachers. Beyond UF’s campus, what are now construction zones and retail spaces were mostly undeveloped tracts of land.
“Newberry Road was the country,” said Waters, who owns a local salon in Gainesville. “As kids, we used to drive out to Newberry Road to feed horses through the fence. That field was where Oaks Mall currently is.”
Over the past 20 years, and notably so in the past year, Gainesville has transformed from a small college town — just a stone’s throw away from rural north Florida — into a commercial and tech hub, with large buildings on the rise and national chains multiplying.
“As a Gainesvillian you don’t recognize the place anymore,” said Peggy Macdonald, the executive director for the Matheson History Museum. “You don’t know where you are. It’s just one giant shopping-center parking lot: a place to drive.”
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Growing up in the ‘90s, Macdonald watched landmarks and local businesses around Gainesville change and grow.
One of the starkest differences is on West University Avenue, where various mixed-use buildings will soon replace local mainstays, including The Jam, the Alligator and the Unified Training Center.
Another is down Southwest 13th Street, where UF Health Shands Hospital seems to double its property every couple years.
And at the intersection of the corridor with Northwest 13th Street, a looming mixed-use building — The Standard — has dominated the city’s skyline, pledging to offer residents food, lodging and shopping across from UF.
But although retail space is theoretically good, and the already-established businesses along South Archer Road and Butler Plaza have propelled the local economy in recent years, Gainesville now looks like every other city in America, losing much of its small-town charm, she said.
The buildings running down West University Avenue were never much to look at, she said. But the series of strip malls starting at Midtown extending toward downtown have always thrived off student business and been necessary to Gainesville’s local scenes and organizations.
“Gainesville is quirky, it’s small and it’s always been like that,” she said. “People want to preserve that.”
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When Waters was a child, Butler Plaza was nothing more than a large field used by hobby pilots to land small planes.
For years after that, she said, it was used by the city as a recreational soccer field.
The city was much more centrally located and quiet, especially since students weren’t allowed to bring their cars to campus, she said.
About 20 years ago, the area began to be renovated, and businesses began to open up in the historic buildings. Downtown’s persona as a ghost town started to change.
When she first opened her salon, The Tease, in the late ‘90s, the downtown area was starting to be renovated, she said. What is now the building that houses Dragonfly Sushi and Hear Again Records used to be a windowless government building, she said.
“Downtown used to be the place when we were kids where we would ride our bikes around,” she said.
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The force behind much of Gainesville’s recent expansion has been Oelrich Construction.
Headed by Ivan Oelrich, the company has been a partner of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency for more than 10 years, renovating current buildings and constructing new ones, including Bo Diddley Community Plaza and the double-helix bridge.
Oelrich said he felt humbled to be a part of the city’s transformation.
Many recently constructed buildings in town have been on the city’s planning board for more than 20 years, he said. Some of these sites include Innovation Square, a burgeoning tech hub where the Alachua General Hospital once stood, and Butler Plaza North, a shopping plaza off Archer Road, soon to boast several national retail spaces.
Completed this summer, the child-centric Depot Park is the most recent project, which 20 years ago was an urban brownfield filled with hazardous waste, he said.
As Gainesville becomes more globalized, more out-of-town brands and businesses are choosing to invest in the city.
“To me it’s really neat to see that area that used to be nothing, is now really something,” he said.
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Twenty-three years ago, Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe was a UF graduate, and beer cost 5 cents.
At the time, Burrito Brothers Taco Co. was still a quintessential Gainesville establishment — not struggling to remain open — and the now-defunct CJ’s Oyster Bar and Seafood House would serve cheap brews.
Since then, he said, the town’s concrete landscape and attitude has expanded. And although change is often good, Gainesville’s changes haven’t been without some disappointment.
This year, Leonardo’s Pizza By the Slice, a doughy mainstay for the past 40 years, announced it would close down, and Burrito Bros. announced construction of the looming The Standard may lead to a similar fate.
“We must work to preserve our original character,” Poe said. “Our pristine, natural environment and our diverse views that make us uniquely Gainesville.”
