History
Built in 1986, SFFGS students, faculty, and friends — along with the broader community in Gainesville and North Florida — used the Conference Center. Every year, more than 7,000 people from these groups held community events and private weddings. The Conference Center served as a place where people could have their event in a serene forest, enjoy the lake and also learn a little about why forests are important in their lives. It connected people from all walks of life with SFFGS, Florida’s forests and all of the benefits they provide. Then on July 19, 2011, a fire at the Austin Cary Forest completely consumed our SFFGS Conference Center and all of its contents.
Immediately after the building burned, faculty, staff, architects, and planners came together to form a Building Restoration Planning Committee. Its mission was to learn from recent users the answer to three critical questions for planning a new building.
- What did you like about the building?
- What were the deficiencies in the building?
- What additions should be made if it is possible to rebuild?
Adding upon this information from users and inspiration from the outpouring of support from alumni and community, as well as the overwhelming enthusiasm to create a new learning facility that will serve future generations, the Planning Committee set about to evolve a building concept reflecting the enhance need. In the meantime, a Development Committee formed to begin planning strategies for raising the money for the replacement building. As donors and volunteers built the prior structure, this building was intended to follow a similar path.
SFFGS held the groundbreaking ceremony for the $2 million Learning Center on April 6, 2013, and it opened a year later thanks to the generous support of hundreds of donors, including the University of Florida and IFAS.
In late 2017, the family of Roland T. Stern dedicated the Learning Center in his honor.
Contact Us
UF/IFAS Austin Cary Forest
10625 NE Waldo Road
Gainesville, FL 32609
Phone: 352-371-8041
Visitors by appointment only.
SFFGS maintains a 2,040-acre teaching and research forest northeast of Gainesville, the Austin Cary Forest. A wide variety of individuals and groups, both related to SFFGS and otherwise, use the forest. Professional schools are required to provide practical training and experimental facilities to supplement students’ classroom and laboratory teaching experience. The School of Forestry — as it was named in 1938 — needed a forest to put into practice the theories and principles of its academic subjects such as protection, silviculture, mensuration, management, economics and others, thus the Austin Cary Forest was created.
