Nine blocks of University Avenue will be closed Sunday as Gainesville residents and students listen to live music, swing fencing swords and enjoy the flavor of local establishments.
The event, called Active Streets, will transform the area between West Sixth Street and Northeast Boulevard into a place where people can interact with one another and local organizations.
The Active Streets Alliance will host the event, closing off the road from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. “to raise awareness for bringing people back into the streets,” said Kimberly Vacca, an Active Streets volunteer surveyor and UF urban and regional planning graduate student.
Vendors are asked to provide free services and activities, like yoga, Zumba, sidewalk-chalk doodling and taste-testing, said Joseph Floyd, the event’s co-chair.
“Instead of selling a lot of stuff or just sitting out handing out pamphlets, what we want to do is actually provide or create experiences for the participants,” Floyd said.
In October, the group tested out Open Streets, the same event on a smaller scale. The pilot event attracted more than 6,000 people and featured 47 businesses and organizations. This year, Floyd said he predicts at least 10,000 people and more than 80 businesses will participate in the event.
It will cost about $18,000 to put on the event, Floyd said. However, if the 10 bands, vendors and equipment donors were compensated for time and services, he said the event would easily cost more than $40,000.
Floyd said he had been researching Open Streets while his co-chair, Shawn Webber, developed an idea for Cyclovia, an event that allows cyclists and pedestrians to be safe in the streets. The Florida Department of Transportation tweeted that they wanted a city to host a Cyclovia-type event, and Floyd and Webber partnered to make Open Streets possible. The department and the City of Gainesville are two of the main funders.
Last year, most participants were residents, Vacca said, but she thinks more students will attend this year.
“I think it’ll be a good way for students to kind of connect with Gainesville and see, you know, what else is out there,” she said.
At last year’s Open Streets, Floyd said he was happy to see people interacting with strangers.
“That’s the beauty of it, right?” he said. “That’s where the community comes in. You see things that you wouldn’t necessarily see, and they’re all wonderful.”
To learn about Active Streets, visit activestreetsalliance.org.
[A version of this story ran on page 3 on 2/17/2015 under the headline “Active Streets to close road to cars in downtown Gainesville on Sunday"]
Andrew Bittikoffer, 5, and Ella Bittikoffer, 3, draw with chalk during Gainesville’s Open Streets event. Their mother, Katherine Bittikoffer, said, “I’ve always seen big cities have events like these. It’s about time Gainesville stepped up.”
