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Newell Gateway Ribbon Cutting

October 19, 2022. Gainesville, FL – On a beautiful brisk fall morning, representatives of the University of Florida, the City of Gainesville, and Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) gathered to celebrate a ribbon cutting for the Newell Gateway.  

President Fuchs

The new UF branded brick gateway framing the tree line pedestrian pathway, creates a welcoming area along University Avenue connecting to the Plaza of the Americas. Newell Gateway is part of a broader set of campus pedestrian and bicyclist safety improvements including its sister project, the Northeast Gateway, located at the intersection of SW 13th Street and SW Second Avenue. These two completed projects represent the first steps in implementing the Landscape Master Plan. 

At the ceremony, there were special remarks from UF President Fuchs, UF Senior Vice President, and Chief Operating Officer Dr. Charlie Lane, Mayor Lauren Poe of the City of Gainesville, and Travis Humphries, Director of Operations, District 2, Florida Department of Transportation. 

“In UF’s 2019 Strategic Campus Master Plan we made a promise to the UF community that we would raise the bar for our physical campus. I’m proud that the gateway projects that we are celebrating strategically enhance UF’s landscape, facilities, pedestrian corridors, and infrastructure,” said Dr. Charlie Lane during his remarks. 

In partnership with UF, the City of Gainesville and FDOT have supported these gateway projects while collectively expressing their continued focus on improving pedestrian and bicyclist safety along University Avenue and SW 13th Street. 

“The city sees the opening of UF Newell and Northeast gateway projects as welcome additions to a course of safety improvements that we have worked on collaboratively to produce,” said Mayor Lauren Poe. 

FDOT will soon install a pedestrian traffic light along University Avenue where the Newell Gateway is met, thus seamlessly integrating the gateway with the state road system. When that is complete, this gateway will become a pedestrian thoroughfare. 

Both the Newell and Northeast gateways serve to further streamline and extend the welcoming and safe passage onto UF’s campus.