After interviewing about 20 Treasure Coast city and county commission candidates the past few weeks, I chatted with a 50-year resident of Palm Beach Gardens. He got there about the same time I first visited that city, then a quiet suburb of West Palm Beach.
He lamented how growth in the Gardens has clogged traffic and driven home prices so high most workers, including teachers, can't afford to live there.
It got me thinking of the wave of people moving north to get away from the growth that damaged the places they lived down south.
And how, after listening to these candidates, I'm more convinced than ever our beautiful region will be trashed by greed, too.
Remembering a slower time, planning ahead
Traffic and crime are among the prices we pay from poor planning or doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I took a job in Vero Beach, then known as "Zero Vero," in 1985. The closest real mall was in Palm Beach County, an easy ride, and there was no traffic heading down U.S. 1 for dessert in Jensen Beach.
Martin and Indian River counties grew slowly compared to St. Lucie.
By 2005, the threat of making the same planning mistakes as in South Florida led the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council and St. Lucie County to hold more than 100 public meetings, working with landowners of 28 square miles from just west of Interstate 95 at Indrio Road to Fort Pierce. The result: an award-winning Towns, Villages and Countryside plan, followed by various land-use rules.
The TVC was designed to “combine agricultural preservation with limited development. Existing development rights can be exercised only by concentrating them in new towns or villages, each to be surrounded by continued agricultural activity.” The plan relied on “traditional neighborhood design to create a sustainable growth pattern characterized by a mix of uses, building types, and income levels on a pedestrian-friendly block and street network.”
Which makes it blatantly clear the St. Lucie County Commission's approval of a Buc-ee’s, one of the world’s largest gasoline stations/convenience stores with 100-plus pumps on 36 acres at the southeast corner of the interchange, isn’t compatible with the plan. It could open in early 2026, TCPalm’s Wicker Perlis reported.
Buc-ee’s is the antithesis of walkable neighborhoods with town centers. As Cathy Townsend, the county commission chair, told our editorial board, Buc-ee’s is designed to lure motorists off I-95 to eat, shop, get gas and use some of the cleanest restrooms around.
St. Lucie County growth to affect its neighbors
From 2023: What would the beaver say? Is Indrio Road exit off Interstate 95 best spot for Buc-ee's?
Issuing a warning: As growth wave, ag loss, possible Buc-ee's head north, will leaders have guts to say no?
Urban services area study: Amid initial hope, be cautious to ensure Vero Beach, Sebastian region grows gracefully
It's coming, like it or not: Giddy over I-95-Oslo work south of Vero Beach? Don't be: Jobs, industry, growth big issues
Buc-ee’s pays employees well, and the county will generate lots of gasoline taxes. Will these sales supplant them from elsewhere in the county or the surrounding area, having a Walmart effect? I don’t know.
I just know Buc-ee's is a traffic magnet. Lots of bad things can happen around huge facilities attracting transient motorists near interstates.
Living only a few miles away in south Indian River County, I’m not thrilled. And by 2027, there will be an I-95 interchange closer to me, on Oslo Road. County leaders already are talking about changing the agriculture zoning on the corridor so developers can build what they want.
Now, though, I’m more worried about the attitudes of our St. Lucie neighbors. Townsend and fellow St. Lucie County Commissioner Linda Bartz, who served on a pro-growth council in sprawling Port St. Lucie, seem oblivious to concerns about cookie-cutter growth.
Like two novices, they seem happy with getting “concessions” from developers to provide land for fire stations, schools or baseball fields. Heck, that kind of stuff has been going on for years. Big whoop!
What hasn’t happened is building mixed-use, interconnected communities and preserving agriculture so people would not have to get on roads like Indrio to go shopping, to work, school and the like. That’s what the TVC was designed to do. Every time St. Lucie commissioners water it down, it becomes less effective.
Left untouched, TVC plan could have controlled growth
From 2020: South Florida developer eyes Indrio & I-95 in Fort Pierce for 2,700-house village
Bartz said amending the TVC is necessary; after all, nothing’s been built there in the 20 years since it was adopted. New people have moved in and they’re OK with the changes.
But how much do any of them really know about the inner-workings of the TVC and how it was supposed to avoid cookie-cutter sprawl? And the out-of-town developers and national builders potentially coming in: Do they care? They won’t have to live here.
Why should all of us care? What happens in north St. Lucie affects Indian River County, just like what has happened in Port St. Lucie affects Martin County, which faces more development pressure.
If there's any good news, it's that Treasure Coast cities are planning for more people to live downtown. The big questions are how many people and what the impacts will be. It's critical we preserve agriculture; it's not only our heritage, but our nutrition. Our economic development policies should encourage agriculture.
But gasoline stations? Massive distribution centers?
Twenty years ago, targeted industries focused on what we hoped to become: the Research Coast, centered in Bartz’s Port St. Lucie. Hundreds of millions of dollars of government incentives were given to entities relocating here, such as the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies, VGTI Florida and Digital Domain.
Good intentions didn't pan out, leaving taxpayers on the hook. Now leaders are satisfied a growing church in Port St. Lucie's former Digital Domain building brings in parishioners from Palm Beach County and St. Lucie County’s big industry is warehouses and distribution centers?
And “Indian River County is next,” Ken Krasnow, the Colliers real estate principal accused of having a conflict of interest in connection with Vero Beach’s Three Corners project, told TCPalm in a recent article.
Retired regional planner from Stuart offers wise advice
What is going on? Is this our region's hope? We have no higher aspirations?
Are cities and counties so obsessed with growth — to generate incremental taxes ― they can’t see the long-term threats?
Mike Busha, retired head of the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, offered some sage advice to me last year when it came to changing anything, such as TVC rules.
“It’s not like we are begging for development,” Busha said, citing the demand coming from South Florida and national developers. “We're holding all of the cards. It would be a shame to give them away.
“Everybody compromised (years ago) in that deal,” he said of the TVC plan, designed to ensure proper water storage for the environment and agriculture. “There’s plenty of room for growth out there.”
But it has to be done right. The TVC set a higher standard for development.
We expect our county and city commissioners to maintain those higher standards.
The Indrio to State Road 60 stretch of I-95 didn’t open until 1977. At the rate we're going, it won’t take anywhere near 47 more years to mess things up.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: At rate we're going, Treasure Coast to be steamrolled by developers
