This weekend I walked from the Roosevelt Bridge to Colorado along Federal Highway. When driving, the trip can take less than 20 seconds if the lights and traffic allow.  But, when you are walking, you have more time to notice your surroundings, and I ended up with a feeling of “emptiness.” As you go south from the bridge, there are a few office buildings interspersed by one story retail spaces, boat yards, car dealers, decaying motels from a bygone era, fast food restaurants, empty lots, downtown Publix center and 2 gas stations. It is neither beautiful nor inspiring.

In the past few years, Stuart has made great strides to develop downtown and Colorado Avenue. We have been woefully negligent of the Federal Highway corridor in our development. We have a charming downtown. Colorado is being reborn. The Sailfish fields are being considered for mixed use with primarily residential development. What about Federal Highway which connects the outside world to Stuart?

Should we continue to have it zoned for these clearly underutilized uses? When these parcels, on such a valuable roadway, are used for a gas station or used car lots, they bring very little in real estate taxes to the city. No matter how much sales tax these businesses generate, Stuart still receives only their proportionate per capita share or roughly 10% of the local county sales tax collected.

We should be looking for the majority of the lots to be a mix of retail and office. There are several such buildings now along that corridor. The empty parcels closest to Palm City Road, which already has residential neighborhoods of one family homes and condos, should be considered for residential development in keeping with the area’s current character. It would be foolish to allow the wrong development to take place because it is expedient so that one or two people can profit at the expense of the entire city.

If we are to grow and prosper, we have to think what is best for all citizens. The economic arguments clearly do not support that the highest and best use for those properties are currently being utilized or imagined. For the City of Stuart to thrive and continue to be a good place to live, our tax base must increase. That is done basically in two ways…more citizens and higher real estate taxes. The way I envision this corridor developing, it will result in both these things occurring. At the same time, it will add almost nothing to the cost of services Stuart provides because they are already in place in this area.

So the questions becomes do we, as citizens, allow this underutilization to continue to our detriment or do we embrace an opportunity to grow in  a responsible manner and at the same time spread the cost of government to more people and entities? I believe the latter. We have chosen to live in a remarkable place. Now we need to think about how we keep it a remarkable place for the next 100 years. The question is not whether we will allow empty parcels to develop (because it is inevitable they will) but how we allow them to develop. The wrong choice by us will have wide repercussions to the amount we pay and the quality of services we receive by the city.