Gainesville City Commissioner Gigi Simmons was the lone dissenting vote last Thursday against a city plan to sell a parcel of land in east Gainesville to a South Florida company that will develop it as an affordable housing community.
“We need to start looking at economic development [in east Gainesville], and not putting all affordable housing in one area,” she said. “You already have an abundance of low-income housing with no grocery stores, no medical centers.”
The parcel is about 4.5 acres of residential-zoned land at 612 SE 21st St., near the corners of Southeast Hawthorne Road and Southeast Eighth Avenue. The city will sell the land to Housing Trust Group LLC, based in Coconut Grove in Miami-Dade County, for $840,000.