Surrounded by plastic tarps and paint cans, Yonhiki No Saru drew abstract monkeys on a wall of The Standard Gainesville’s parking garage on four panels.
The four colorful murals added to The Standard Gainesville’s parking garage on Northwest Third Avenue, facing the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts on Southwest 13th Street, are part of a negotiation with the City of Gainesville for an encroachment on the Florida Department of Transportation’s property when the complex’s parking garage was built in 2017. The company overbuilt on the property by less than 10 feet, said Chip Skinner, a city spokesperson.
With these murals, LM Gainesville, LLC, which built the complex, would also have to pay $75,000 to the city. It was part of the compromise the company struck with the city as a reasonable cost instead of rebuilding the garage.
“Reconstructing that is not economically feasible,” Skinner said. “It really didn’t make much sense to demolish it and reconstruct it. It would’ve cost them a bit more money than that $75,000 fine.”
He said it was in the interest of the city to not make The Standard tear down its building and tie up the traffic in the area.
The situation with the encroachment was unique when the 10-story apartment complex sprung up across the street from UF’s campus, Skinner said.
“We’ve never had a building built to that magnitude within the city,” he said.
The encroachment does not affect pedestrians or traffic and doesn’t pose as a hazard to fire rescue response, he said.
Assistant Fire Chief Stephen Hesson said the Gainesville Fire Rescue is not concerned with the required fire department access needed in the event there was a fire in the building. The fire department has the 20 feet it needs for its vehicles, even with the encroachment.
“It’s typical when we set up our apparatus to block a lane of traffic or an entire road because our trucks are so big,” he said. “This protects firefighters working around the truck.”
He said the department has different tactics, like a sprinkler system inside the building, in case of a fire. He said the building’s fire response systems are unique due to the size of the building.
“It requires additional attention and resources,” he said. “It presents a unique challenge, and obviously we are capable to deal with a fire there, but it wouldn’t be a routine fire for us.”
Contact Christina Morales at cmorales@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter at @Christina_M18.
Four colorful murals of monkeys were added to a wall of The Standard Gainesville’s parking garage on Northwest Third Avenue as part of a negotiation with the City of Gainesville. The building encroaches on the Florida Department of Transportation’s property by less than ten feet.
