After two years of planning, the Nature Coast Biological Station in Cedar Key will reopen to the public.
UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, which has conducted research in Cedar Key for 25 years, will debut the new building Sept. 23. The grand opening will be from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will showcase the station’s research in Cedar Key, a city that thrives on fishing, said Mike Allen, the station’s director. The building cost about $2 million, Allen said.
“We can have undergraduate classes come out and do field work and field-based laboratories in residence,” said Charles Martin, a UF research assistant professor at Cedar Key.
In 2015, Santa Fe College and UF purchased the Gulf Side Motel to use its dock to access their other lab.
“After that, we started discussions of building the biological station on this motel site, so it’s really just created an opportunity to do that,” Allen said.
The original motel was demolished and rebuilt as the station’s office. The strip of motel rooms will be renovated into labs, classrooms and dorms to accommodate UF students.
The new building is a three-story wooden-frame house that resembles the area’s beach town aesthetic, Allen said. He said locals wanted a building that fit in.
“We certainly didn’t want to build a cinder block, government looking building in this area, and the city of course didn’t want that, too,” Allen said.
