Iconic symbols: Gainesville City Hall water features set for demolition

Robert “Hutch” Hutchinson was working for the Downtown Redevelopment Agency in the 1990s when he began to notice daily appearances by a great blue heron.

“It would come gliding in every morning and hover over” the two pools outside City Hall, the former Alachua County commissioner recalls. At the time the city was stocking the cement pools with koi. “They were sitting ducks for the heron.”

Mark Barrow remembers it a bit differently.

“They weren’t eating the koi, they were eating mosquito fish,” minnow-like critters that shared the pools. “The city staff got all bent out of shape, but the koi were too big for the heron.”

Either way, City Hall’s two iconic cement pools these days host neither koi nor mosquito fish. Rather the more than half century-old structures sit empty and awaiting demolition. The City Commission has approved a $154,378 project to remove the pools from City Hall Plaza and replace them with landscaping, sidewalks and other improvements.

Although a redesign plan has yet to be created, staff say the idea is to make a more amiable space where people can congregate.

“There’s definitely a need for a better space for people to gather and to host a variety of outdoor events,” says Betsy Waite, the city’s Wild Spaces and Public Places coordinator. “There’s really not a lot of room right now for people to stand or sit.”

With low retaining walls and narrow passageways, city staff say the pools do not seamlessly connect with other plaza features, like the nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial or the corner clock tower.

Replacing the pools with level greenspace and better sidewalks, they say, will improve connectivity while maintaining the plaza’s historic character.

“The existing concrete is not in great shape,” Waite said. And the existing green area is “not large enough to support” the trees that are already there.

Built in 1968 as part of Gainesville’s new City Hall-public library complex, the pools have at one time or another hosted not just fish but large limestone boulders and fountains. Sometimes the water in the pools seemed so artificially blue that jokesters called it “Ty-D-Bol water.”

In more recent years the pool bottoms were repainted in bright colors.

“Frankly i loved it when they painted them,” said Linda McGurn, who has been a major force in downtown redevelopment for decades. “I thought that was funky. However, landscaping and green space might be pretty. It depends on how they do it.”

In addition to removing the pools, the plaza’s palm trees and crepe myrtles will be replaced with trees like southern magnolias, bluff oak, white oak and black gum. Additional bike racks, new tables and chairs and recycling containers also will be installed.

Moreover, city officials say that mechanical and plumbing problems have made the pools more and more difficult and expensive to maintain.

“The ponds in front of City Hall were built in the 1960s. In the decades since, the plumbing underneath the ponds has experienced leaks that have become increasingly costly to repair,” said city spokesperson Rossana Passaniti.

“It would cost a minimum of $20,000 for the initial repair to the plumbing, plus additional funds to investigate the cause of numerous suspected leaks in the piping connected to City Hall. Which is why city staff recommended a plan to replace the ponds with naturally sustainable areas, accessible to all neighbors," she said.

Mark Barrow, for one, doesn’t buy that rational.

The 89-year old self-styled Gainesville historian and a founder of the Matheson History Museum says the pools are iconic Gainesville symbols and should be preserved as such. Moreover, Barrow says the city doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to maintaining green areas.

“I call them the ponds, and they add a certain ambience,” Barrow said. “If you take them away and replace them with landscaping the ambience goes away.”

He added: “I don’t think people will ever gather in front of city hall. Right across the street you have (Bo Diddley Plaza). Why gather in front of city hall?”

As for the notion that the fountains have become too costly to maintain: “Anything can be fixed, that’s just malarkey. It would be less expensive to fix them than take them out.”

How iconic are the City Hall ponds?

Well, in his book “Florida’s Eden,” John B. Pickard writes that construction of the new City Hall complex was an effort to put a more modern face on Gainesville’s previous “antiquated” 1928 circa City Hall.

“In 1968 a new city hall and library complex were built with stark angular lines and rough stone exteriors which harmonize artfully with the local shrubs a long reflecting pool and jetting water fountains,” he wrote.

The new City Hall was built in the “brutalist” architectural style much in favor in public buildings in the post-World War II era. Brutalist architecture is known to favor functionalism over aesthetics and tends to run toward expanses of textured concrete.

At the 1969 dedication ceremony then-Gainesville Mayor Walter Murphee said the design of the new City Hall/library complex was part in parcel of a larger plan aimed at “revitalizing and improving” downtown Gainesville.

The city’s plan, however, did little to prevent a steady downtown deterioration after construction of the Gainesville and Oaks malls and downtown businesses, and their customers, followed a western movement out into the suburbs.

Fifty-five years later Gainesville’s downtown is considerably more robust then in Murphee’s day.

And current Mayor Harvey Ward says the plaza redesign will better reflect downtown as it is today.

“The City Hall Plaza is the people’s plaza. It should be an open, welcoming space for neighbors to meet, gather or organize in the heart of our vital and growing downtown.”

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Iconic Gainesville Florida City Hall water features set for demolition