By PETER GUINTA
University of Florida and City of St. Augustine representatives worked to find common ground Wednesday rather than struggle for control of the 34 historic state properties here.
John Regan, St. Augustine's chief operating officer and next city manager, said he and Chief Administrative Officer Tim Burchfield plan a trip to Gainesville next week to hammer out a three-party agreement with the city, the university and the National Park Service.
"That will define how we move forward," Regan said.
Ed Poppel, UF's vice president for business affairs, said the university will "bring a wealth of resources, know-how and expertise" to those properties. "All the colleges on campus will engage with St. Augustine. We can provide depth of content to the city to make this a better story."
Superintendent Gordon Wilson of the Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas national monuments said the historic property issue is intimately tied to completion of a proposed $10 million Visitor Orientation Center in the Spanish Quarter.
That project received $500,000 for the Park Service for planning and pre-design.
"We want to start the building process to make this work for everyone involved," Wilson said. "It's a unique opportunity to show the world what St. Augustine has to offer."
At the moment, he added, there's no construction money.
And another obstacle is clearing the site's title, which is held partly by the city and partly by the state.
The National Park Service is prohibited from building or owning structures on property it doesn't own, so some land swaps may be necessary to get a large enough parcel.
Schematics show a two-story, 17,000-square-foot colonial-style building designed to provide context to St. Augustine's history as well as to display artifacts uncovered during archaeological digs here.
The building will have a 2,500-square-foot footprint.
The new, more congenial relationship between the city and UF is far different from the defiant words and political push by St. Augustine Mayor Joe Boles, who last month asked the Legislature and Cabinet to give the historic properties to the city and not UF.
Boles was in North Carolina on Wednesday and got a report on the meeting by Regan.
"I couldn't be more pleased," Boles said. "The details have to be worked out, obviously. It is also possible that we can figure out a way to be helpful to UF by giving its students a venue (for internships)."
He still believes the city could do much better raising money on its own than waiting for the Legislature.
"That there's no state money is not anything new. We'll embark on our own fundraising plan. The adversarial period appears to be behind us," he said.
Poppel said essentially the same thing that morning.
"We don't need to be fighting among ourselves for control," he said.
Deputy Regional Director Gayle Hazelwood of the National Park Service's Atlanta office chaired the meeting and said she had heard many good ideas.
"Maybe we can get the best of those plans together and attain our goals," Hazelwood said. "We can't do the planning and design for the (Visitor Orientation) center unless we have this dialogue and discussion."
Regan said any tally of St. Augustine residents' core values would show historic preservation at the top of the list.
He said the city's goals include not losing its relationship to UF, stepping up its business plan and achieving measurable goals, and developing a clear vision of what St. Augustine wants to become.
In addition, a city resolution passed in April should not have used the word "sunset" in referring to the 2007 law giving UF control of the properties, he said.
"We want to move forward with UF and NPS. The university could take those buildings from us today. But we don't want to turn over the keys until UF has smiling people ready (to deal with visitors)," he said.
Poppel said UF was indeed invited to St. Augustine.
"This is not at our request. Outreach is what we do, and we do it in a big way," he said. "But this is about what is best for St. Augustine. It's not about UF."
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