The director of a New York-based nonprofit organization is hoping to add to the active music scene in Gainesville with a new venue.
Jordan Puryear, the director of Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival Organization Inc., currently produces three music festivals a year.
He wants to produce a fourth and is eyeing Alachua County. Puryear has a contract to purchase a 270-acre site near Melrose with the intention of developing it into a space called Wildflowers Music Park.
The property — with a pending sale price of $2.6 million — will remain under contract until Sept. 30 as GrassRoots gathers the funds to purchase it, Puryear said.
The group founded the Finger Lakes GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance in 1991. The annual summer festival is held in the organization’s home base of Trumansburg, New York.
In 2003, GrassRoots expanded with the creation of the Shakori Hills GrassRoots Festival of Music and Dance near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, now the site of its annual spring and fall festivals.
For a winter festival, Puryear said GrassRoots is eyeing the site near Melrose as the new home for the annual event.
Since its inception in 2012, the yearly winter festival was previously held at the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park in Miami until GrassRoots announced its cancellation on Facebook in January.
In the search for a new location, Puryear said finding the property near Melrose was “somewhat fortuitous.”
“When I saw the property, I was like, ‘This is an incredibly perfect festival site,’” Puryear said. “It just needs some mowing, landscaping and a little bit of water and power, and you could just have a big gathering there.”
As for Alachua County, Puryear said the demographics and music scene “just make sense” for a GrassRoots Festival.
“The essence of the festival is that it’s really rooted in the community, and it’s an expression of the dynamic and artistic quality of the community, which I just know Alachua County has in spades,” Puryear said.
GrassRoots is in the process of forming an LLC with the purpose of purchasing the site near Melrose. The goal, Puryear said, is to raise $1.5 million to secure the property.
GrassRoots is also seeking involvement from the community, Puryear said.
“There’s certainly, I would say, an amazing community coming together already to help work on it,” Puryear added.
Lauren Poe, former Gainesville mayor and the president and CEO of the Greater Gainesville International Center, is one member of that community.
Given the history of the festivals the organization has hosted in New York and North Carolina, Poe said he thinks GrassRoots is a “good fit” for the greater Gainesville area and North Central Florida.
“I think we’ll see a lot more opportunities for local artists and musicians to be part of something bigger, showcase themselves and get themselves in front of audiences they otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity to do,” Poe said.
Kenneth Metzker, an assistant in musical accompaniment at the University of Florida’s School of Theatre and Dance, has backed the project, too, Puryear said.
Metzker has been supportive of the organization since it began its winter iteration of the festival in Miami in 2012 and feels GrassRoots is perfect[BD1] for Alachua County.
“The way that the organization conducts themselves, they come from a place of love, community and sustainability,” Metzker said. “The community is hungry for a venue like this.”
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