The Site
Downtown, Gainesville, FloridaAbode is built on the back lot of 618 South Main, just northwest of Depot Park and the Cade Museum and directly across the street from South Main Station. By the time construction begins, the 618 buildings will already be operating as a working cultural corridor. Those buildings stay. Abode rises around them on the two-acre back lot, and when the development is complete, the original buildings and new construction blend into a single cohesive district—with 618's active programs continuing as anchor components of the larger Abode.
The parcel sits inside Gainesville's Community Reinvestment Area and a federal Opportunity Zone. Base U6 zoning layered with Florida's Live Local Act enables additional density, height, and parking flexibility in exchange for a substantial workforce-housing commitment which is what Abode is designed to be naturally.
2.8 Acre Parcel
~2.4 acre back lot
250 Units
45% Workforce
351,400 GSF
5-7 Stories
Density in Context
The Standard at Gainesville (completed in 2017), 1.5 miles from the site, delivered 430 units on 1.97 acres at 218 units per acre across ten stories—with 1,188 parking spaces, or 2.76 per unit.
Abode proposes 250 units on 2.4 acres. 104 units per acre (less than half The Standard's density), with 270 parking spaces at 1.08 per unit. The density Abode needs has already been permitted and built nearby. What differs is what the building holds and who it is for.
Acres
Units
Density
Parking per unit
Affordability
Financing
1.97
430
218 du/ac
2.76
None
Conventional
2.40
250
104 du/ac
1.08
45%, 30-year term
Public, philanthropic, tax-credit
What’s In The Building
Abode will be five to seven stories, totaling over 351,400 square feet with fourteen distinct uses. Residential rent is under half of what Abode earns—the rest is a cultural and hospitality operation Creative Cultural runs rather than leases out.
Roof
Below Roof
Upper Levels
Level 3
Podium
Ground Level
All-day cafe, bar & lounge · pool deck
Wellness & fitness — sauna, cold plunge, treatment rooms
250 residential units
Cultural core — creative campus, artist studios, exhibition & performance
Grocer · micro food hall · retail · parking
200-capacity club w/ street entrance · community commissary kitchen · loading · garage
Exact placement, circulation and access are design decisions to be confirmed with architects and engineers.
Residential & Hospitality
A NEW WAY TO STAY IN GAINESVILLEBlending residential and hospitality to create a flexible environment that accommodates the variety of ways people live in cities.
Residences
Small Footprint Units
Thoughtfully designed units that make the most of space at an affordable rate. Strong materials focus such as lime-wash finished walls.Flexible
Community Housing Residency
A term-based (1-24 month) housing program for residencies and those contributing meaningfully to Gainesville’s community.
Flippable Student Housing
Intuitively designed housing that converts to bnb/hotel/hostel rooms during school breaks.Family
Multi-Bedroom Units
Larger units that adapt to how people actually live—leased whole to families and workforce households, or by the bed for students and roommate groups.Residential Breakdown
Micro-studio
Studio
1-bed
2-bed
4-bed
Total
200-350 SF
350-450 SF
450-650 SF
700-900 SF
1,200-1,500 SF
~588 SF Avg
11
25
49
27
—
112
13
28
54
31
12
138
24
53
103
58
12
250
Workforce
Workforce + market
Workforce + market
Workforce + market
Flexible
Net rentable: 147,050 SF of 182,500 GSF (80.6% efficient) · Affordability set-aside: 45% (Live Local minimum is 40%)
Abode's residential program is entirely rental—250 units across five types, averaging 588 square feet. Roughly 45% are income-restricted and held affordable for 30 years, income-averaged to 60% of Area Median Income, with 40 units reserved for households at or below 30% AMI and 13 units set aside for residents with special needs. The remaining 138 units are unrestricted and available as conventional leases, extended-stay, seasonal, or residency housing. Because Alachua County's 80% AMI rent limits sit above HUD Fair Market Rent, the majority of Abode's units carry no rent penalty and affordability is achieved through structure rather than pricing down the whole building. Four-bedroom units are held entirely outside the restricted pool so they can serve families, workforce households, or by-the-bed leasing interchangeably.
Instead of operating a seperate hotel, Abode integrates roughly 45 unrestricted units designed and equipped to move between conventional lease, extended-stay, and short-term use as demand shifts through the year—full during the school year, available to visitors, touring artists, and residency guests when it isn't.
Short-Term & Flexible Stay
Extended-Stay Units
Furnished small-footprint and one-bedroom units for stays of a week to several months. Visiting faculty, traveling professionals, artists in residence.Seasonal Conversion
Student-leased units that flip to nightly and weekly stays during summer and winter breaks, when Gainesville's rental demand drops but visitor demand does not.
Residency Housing
Term-based placements drawn from the same flexible pool, allocated to artists, researchers, and collaborators through Creative Cultural's residency program.Total Flexible-Stay Inventory: ~45 Units
One operating team, one building, one set of systems—hospitality revenue without the second business.
Food & Beverage
Abode is home to a thriving farm-to-table food ecosystem—a grocer, a ten-stall food hall, and a shared kitchen that feeds the building in more ways than one.
Abode is home to a thriving farm-to-table food ecosystem—a grocer, a ten-stall food hall, and a shared kitchen that feeds the building in more ways than one.
5,500 SFNeighborhood Grocer
Blends into the food hall through a shared seating room rather than sitting behind its own wall.
4,000 SFCommunity Commissary KitchenLicensed production space rented to food entrepreneurs, a meal-prep service for residents, students and the public at $60 a week, and resident dining delivered in-building. It also produces the rooftop menu, sent up by dumbwaiter — which is what lets home chefs and residency chefs cook into a real service without running a restaurant. 10 Stalls, 8,000 SF
Micro Food Hall
Leased to food entrepreneurs at accessible rates, with a central bar and a dining room that doubles as public co-work through the day. Because prep, cold storage and dish happen in the commissary below, a stall is a finish-out rather than a six-figure build.
Cafe, Bar & Lounge
Rooftop All-Day
Coffee and tea in the morning, laptops and light plates through the afternoon, full bar and DJ programming at night.
Blends into the food hall through a shared seating room rather than sitting behind its own wall.
4,000 SFCommunity Commissary Kitchen
Licensed production space rented to food entrepreneurs, a meal-prep service for residents, students and the public at $60 a week, and resident dining delivered in-building. It also produces the rooftop menu, sent up by dumbwaiter — which is what lets home chefs and residency chefs cook into a real service without running a restaurant.
Leased to food entrepreneurs at accessible rates, with a central bar and a dining room that doubles as public co-work through the day. Because prep, cold storage and dish happen in the commissary below, a stall is a finish-out rather than a six-figure build.
Cafe, Bar & Lounge Rooftop All-Day
Coffee and tea in the morning, laptops and light plates through the afternoon, full bar and DJ programming at night.
The Cultural Core
Level 3 · 41,000 SF
The cultural core is what 618 becomes at scale—open to members, rentable by the public, and the reason the rest of the building holds together.
Creative Campus & Workspace
A bar and reception spine splits the room: lounge and library one way, open workspace the other, crossing over as you move between them. The library is where Off The Books expands once Abode is built. Around it:
Digital production collapsed into a laptop, so a digital suite competes with a bedroom. A darkroom, a tape machine, and a pair of turntables can't be easily attained by most people at home, which is what makes them worth leaving the house for, to use, or to learn how to use. There is no public darkroom anywhere in Gainesville, and Off The Books already sells the film.
Artist Studios
Around 200 SF each at accessible rates, with a shared wet and messy workshop for anything that needs sinks and ventilation.
Exhibition & Performance
A white-box gallery—home to Supermarket Gallery Gainesville, carried over from Miami—and a flexible black box with rigging, AV and a sprung floor.
The Club
200 capacity
with its own street-level entrance, full liquor, house and techno with room for the alternative bookings. Gainesville hasn't had a proper home for since Simon's. Built with a floating slab and acoustic vestibules so it can run late underneath 250 apartments.
Rooftop All-Day
An all-day cafe with bar, dining and lounge, alongside an outdoor patio with views and DJ programming.
Wellness & The Roof
Wellness & Fitness
Downtown Gainesville has no proper gym. Fitness floor, class studio, sauna and steam, cold plunge and recovery, and three treatment rooms available to rent. Open to residents and to the neighborhood, priced to compete with the drive across town rather than undercut it.
5,000 SF
Rooftop Pool
1,200 square feet of water and a deck, on the same level as the all-day cafe, so the bar and service are already there. It’s not just a summertime amenity either. It works most of the year, and it's programmable when we want it to be.
Green At Every Level
To maximize a relatively small footprint, Abode distributes green space vertically with podium terraces and rooftop gardens that connect through ramps, elevators, and graded paths to create a universally accessible green system layered throughout the building.
The terraced massing is what makes it work. Each step in height opens the roof of the level below as planted, usable outdoor space. Florida-climate-suited shade planting runs throughout. The result is more usable green area than the footprint alone would allow, available to residents and the broader community regardless of mobility.
Key Features:
- Mid-level podium terraces with shaded gathering areas
- Resident sky gardens and rooftop green space
- Year-round residencies, installations, markets, and community programs
- Flexible infrastructure: container hubs, solar pavilions, teaching kitchens
- Florida-climate-suited shade planting integrated at every level
Education
A real-world education model layered into daily operations and tenancies.
- Youth and adult programming embedded into the building's operations
- Partnerships with the University of Florida, Santa Fe College, 4-H, and local K–12 schools
- Artist studios and the media studio operating as teaching infrastructure, not just production space
- Integration with the broader ecosystem
What Abode Gives Downtown Gainesville
Within accessible distance of East Gainesville and reachable from across Alachua County, Abode brings what Downtown Gainesville has been needing.
- 250 new homes within walking distance of downtown employment, Depot Park, and the Cade Museum—enough residents to sustain a daily economy.
- Downtown Gainesville's first neighborhood grocer, a ten-stall food hall, a commissary kitchen feeding residents and food entrepreneurs, a co-work campus and a gym. Space that is occupied at 10am on a Tuesday and 10pm on a Saturday.
- A 41,000 SF cultural core: creative campus with screening theatre, production studios, podcast suites and a darkroom; 30 artist studios; a gallery and a black box; a 200-capacity club. Added to the bookstore, radio station, media studio and market halls already operating at 618.
- Built to bring East-side residents and broader Alachua County back into downtown, through programming designed in conversation with those communities.