Depot Park is celebrating 10 years of walkers, runners, frisbee throwers, kids climbing all over its playground and all-around park goers at the city of Gainesville Decade at Depot event on Saturday night.
Envisioned as a Central Park for Gainesville, city leaders earned a grant from the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection in 2000 and cleaned the contaminated “brownfield.” The land had been used for decades as a rail yard and commercial hub, with a manufactured gas plant producing the main coal tar residual contamination.
Officials removed the top 50 feet of earth to remediate the environmental impacts. The “Big Dig” included over 147,000 tons of contaminated soil and over 40 million gallons of contaminated water…