Depot Park — Gainesville’s largest park — spans 32 acres. With a selection of local restaurants, walking paths, a playground and an alligator or two, college students, children and adults alike are drawn to the spacious, green area located downtown.
The park is one of the most visited places in Gainesville, but how safe is it?
Nora Wiser, a 75-year-old Hawthorne resident, often explores Gainesville’s different parks with her friend, Linda Dillon. The pair doesn’t visit Depot often, but Wiser feels confident in the park's safety during the day, she said.
“In the daytime alone, I would feel safe doing the whole hike around the pond,” she said. “There is just plenty of visibility in everything, and it looks so well maintained that I would feel safe being alone.”
According to the Gainesville Police Department, criminal mischief, when someone intentionally damages another person's property, including graffiti or vandalism, is the most common offense, making up 8% of incidents since 2011, followed by car burglaries and petty theft.
In 2024, under 0.25% of city-wide Gainesville police responses were recorded near Depot Park — a little less than one incident occurring in the area every two weeks. Although crime peaked at 42 incidents in 2018, it dropped to 27 by 2020 and still has not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Depot Park officially opened in August 2016 after years of environmental restoration, according to the city’s website. The site originally housed a train depot built in the 1860s, until the tracks became abandoned in the 1920s. It remained relatively untouched until the City of Gainesville purchased the land in 1990.
Decades of abandonment and a former coal gas plant polluted and contaminated the water and soil. It took years for the city to restore the park through extensive remediation efforts, including soil excavation, water treatment and the removal of hazardous materials.
Now, it’s a popular hangout spot used for outdoor recreation.
Ellie Townsend and Sanyukta Shukla, two mothers living in the Gainesville area, frequently visit Depot Park with their children for playdates, taking advantage of the park's expansive playground.
As parents, the women feel safe bringing their children to the park when it’s busy and other families are around, they said.
Townsend has lived on and off in Gainesville for her whole life. For the most part, the city does a good job of keeping up with the park maintenance, the 38-year-old said, as well as providing lots of green spaces.
“I was looking at the whole list of parks recently, and there were some I had never even heard of,” Townsend said.
When the park is quieter, or it's nearing nighttime, Sanyukta Shukla feels a little more on edge.
“We make it a point to not be here as it gets dark,” Shukla said. “I think it’s a recent thing. It was not like that before.”
Sometimes, though, she feels unsafe when it’s just her kids and someone without a child is lingering, she said.
The park also has public restrooms available, but Shukla said she’ll sometimes open up a stall in the women’s restroom to find someone inside, making her uncomfortable.
Even though alcohol is prohibited at Depot Park, Shukla said people tend to drink around the bathrooms and the pavilion area at night.
Rossana Passaniti, a spokesperson for the City of Gainesville, said dedicated park staff are on-site during open hours to monitor the area and maintain a safe environment for visitors.
The park’s staff has not made any changes to its current safety protocols for the city’s parks, Passaniti said.
Contact Olivia Shehadi at oshehadi@alligator.org. Follow her on X @OliviaS111.
