Thank you for signing the petition to save Graham Woods!

Update: This week, UF continues to stifle public review of their controversial plans to eliminate Graham Woods and replace it with a couple retention ponds.  On Tuesday, the Land Use and Facilities Planning Committee held a meeting in which public access was restricted in multiple ways.  This includes not releasing a Zoom link for the meeting, and also by not having parking available.  At least one person who drove over 30 minutes to attend could not because they were unable to find parking, noting that the basketball game cut off several parking lots.  UF does not provide free spaces despite forcing the public to show up in person.

This morning, about 24 hours before the meeting tomorrow at 9am, the staff for the Lakes, Vegetation, and Landscaping committee finally released their agenda, giving the public virtually no time to review, comment, or prepare, and preventing ADA accommodations, as the last page of the agenda says such requests need to be made 5 days in advance.  The PD&C department again lists the Graham Woods demolition as a "Minor Project" and instead of giving details on tree removals and stormwater calculations as requested by the committee last month, gave a biased, unproven, and deceptive list of talking points, and just asks the committee and the public to "take their word for it."

No alternatives were presented, no diagrams of where the trees are, no expert opinions or biological reports.  The PD&C department simply wants to ram this terribly-designed project through with no chance for even minor common sense modification.  Looking at just a few of the faulty points they make, they claim that the massive tree removal has been "reevaluated" but fail to say who did that, or present the data from such a review.  They also point out that $455,500 will be put into a mitigation bank, but this fund has been abused in recent years by Facilities Services, spending money earmarked for planting new trees literally for antithetical projects such as laying sod and hiring contractors for tree removals, and doing so without LVL committee authorization!

The PD&C report tries to gain legitimacy through suggesting that this will be like Sweetwater Wetlands Park or Depot Park, which is ridiculous.  Simply name-checking local projects does not justify this one, and experts who worked on those will tell you the Graham Woods demolition is nothing like them, and may be doing much more harm than good.  Those also took many years to design and develop, and weren't quickly rushed through without public scrutiny.

The March 3 PD&C letter goes on to say that the "Infrastructure Council" reviewed this in February, and therefore there is magically "stakeholder support" for the Project.  Breaking this down, first, there was no vote, second, there was no agenda item listing it, let alone supporting materials for the public to review.  It is not even clear if there was a quorum, as UF refuses to release minutes of meetings in a timely manner (as of writing this, those were still not posted, and neither is the agenda for this Friday's meeting, *edit, agenda just came out, the day before the meeting, see below).

So how can you help?  Well, first attend tomorrow's LVL Committee meeting at 9am (PD&C Stadium Building room 225) and ask them to stop the destruction of Graham Woods.  Demand more transparency with this and all projects, for the public to be able to participate via Zoom, and for meetings to be recorded.  Next, you can attend Friday's Infrastructure Council meeting at 2:30pm (edit: room clarified to Rinker 303 after agenda just came out; Zoom option available, see details below*), and ask for their support in slowing down this awful project as well.  Finally, you can always contact UF Student Government, the Faculty Senate, or the Board of Trustees and ask them to take action as well.

Thanks again for caring about the Graham Woods ecosystem; over 340 signatures in under a week means a lot!

*Edit: 3/6/26 Infrastructure Council meeting Zoom info: https://ufl.zoom.us/j/99723654063?pwd=BU44EtTjfRpEY3agcKIcbCRhkfJNnJ.1  
Meeting ID: 997 2365 4063   /   Passcode: 040825   /   Dial in: +1 305 224 1968