New child care center, road fixes in mix for SW residents

By Cindy Swirko / Gainesville Sun

In another year or so, the focus of child care in Alachua County will be on Linton Oaks — a community that has gotten little attention, and what it has gotten has largely been bad.

But the center — a partnership between the Southwest Advocacy Group and the University of Florida — has the potential to greatly impact of a new generation of kids in the impoverished neighborhoods of southwest Gainesville.

“We have 860 kids under the age 5…and only 57 of them in 2014 were enrolled in Head Start. When kids are starting school, they are not ready for kindergarten. They are behind from the start,” said Dorothy Benson, a SWAG founder. “The early childhood learning center will provide quality early learning opportunities for children.”

The new center is one of several initiatives that could improve life for the residents of southwest Gainesville neighborhoods clustered between Eighth and 20th/24th avenues.

From a road extension to a push for more recreation, various organizations are lobbying support and raising money for a number of projects.

For SWAG, the child education center is expected build on progress that is already being made since the SWAG resource center opened, including a 45 percent reduction in verified child maltreatment.

The center will provide high-quality child care and will serve as a demonstration site for other child care providers. Parents will be encouraged to come in and spend time with their children on activities such as reading and learn things they can do to foster their children’s learning and health.

UF’s Anita Zucker Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies, which runs the Baby Gator child care centers, will operate the center.

It is a perfect match between the Baby Gator program and SWAG.

Baby Gator was intending to create an off-campus site and was considering the Innovation Square area between campus and downtown, said Baby Gator Director Pam Pallas. But when SWAG leaders approached Baby Gator with the idea of a center there, the plan was born.

“Our focus is to make sure that children from birth on are receiving appropriate care and that they are learning how to learn so that they are prepared to go to school,” Pallas said. “We want an environment where moms will come in and spent time with their babies. Our teachers can work with them to talk to their babies and how and when to put their baby to sleep. We don’t want to take over the role of mom, we want mom to understand what is best for their children.”

UF has kicked in $400,000 for the center with SWAG pledging to raise a $200,000 match. The center will be on Southwest 61st Street, the main road in Linton Oaks.

The street itself will undergo a major change that could spur revitalization of the area. It used to run through Linton into Hidden Oaks mobile home park, once named Castlegate, but was blocked off.

At the park’s insistence, people who try to walk from neighboring communities such as Holly Heights to the SWAG center or clinic are sometimes trespassed or given warnings by the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office. They must take the bus, which goes out to Tower Road to 20th/24th Avenue. Meanwhile, people with cars also have to take a longer route.

But the county will extend the street and link it to Southwest Eighth Avenue, allowing easier travel between the various neighborhoods.

“Access from other neighborhoods will increase when the road goes through,” said Linton resident and SWAG board member Joan Canton. “It’s going to make a big difference for the people in these neighborhoods. It will be so much easier to get to SWAG or the clinic or the new child care center.”

Once the street is opened, residents hope a traffic light will be placed at 61st and 20th Avenue. The light will reduce wait times — in an ASO survey, 23 cars were lined up at one point waiting on 61st to get onto 20th. The lanes on 20th will also be reconfigured to stem backups that occur when an eastbound motorist is turning left into Linton.

Increased recreation in the neighborhoods is a goal, perhaps including the launch of an effort to get more facilities.

Also potentially in the works is a partnership with the Gainesville Area Community Tennis Association’s Aces in Motion program. It provides tennis — sometimes with portable nets — in low income neighborhoods and combines sport with lessons in life skills, character development, field trips to UF tennis matches and more.

Tennis courts at Majestic Oaks, which have no nets and are more often used for basketball and skateboarding, have potential as a site.

Meanwhile, Anne Koterba of the association is also on Alachua County’s Recreation and Open Space Advisory Committee. She said she may push for the construction of facilities in the southwest area and has been working with SWAG on the issue.

“For the older kids, there’s nothing for them to do. And transportation is such a huge issue. Unless you are going to make an Uber for low-income kids, there is just no way to get them around. They are in recreational deserts where the kids have nothing to do after school, so they do bad things,” Koterba said. “Someone said of Robert Dentmond, who said he was suicidal and didn’t feel a part of anything, that maybe if there had been a park or someplace where he felt a part of things — if there was recreation in his community — that maybe he wouldn’t have felt like that. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference, but maybe it would have.”