Last Sunday, I was driving on Kanner Highway from Federal Highway to I-95. Anyone who regularly makes that drive can see that change has occurred in the past few years. Once undeveloped lands have morphed into gas stations, single-story buildings and fast-food outlets.
Kanner is a main road and that is where development should happen. Yet, I can’t help but think that what is being built there is not in the best interest of the County and its residents. If we are going to build new buildings in a formerly undeveloped area, that development should provide enough real estate taxes, jobs, and new homes to make it worth the loss of the green-space.
What the governments of Martin County allow seems to be mired in a 1960s development pattern that encourages sprawl and the use of cars. Don’t get me wrong…I love having Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen, but did it have to take up over an acre of land to sell chicken?
Cleveland Clinic has built a 4-story surgical center on Kanner and Willoughby. When it was approved by the Stuart City Commission under the Martin Memorial banner, it was supposed to pay real estate taxes. If that remains true and the project will result in many high paying jobs, then it was a good trade off for a valuable commodity (i.e., vacant land). Popeye’s or Taco Bell are nice additions to the County, but the few jobs created are low-skill, minimally paid, and the real estate taxes are insignificant.
I challenge our governments to rethink their Land Development and Zoning Codes to allow for much greater density on these major thoroughfares. The Wawa being built now in Stuart on Federal Highway is not the best use for that property. You could call it redevelopment since the old bank building was bulldozed to make way for a newer bank branch and gas station. But, has the taxpayer received a maximum benefit? Remember the 7-11 property, which is owned by the City of Stuart, situated across from the Kanner Highway Wawa? It went out of business. I suspect that at least one or maybe two gas stations will close near the new Wawa within a year or so, resulting in a difficult re-use of those properties.
Governments need to encourage denser infill development and redevelopment along these major transportation corridors. If we are to preserve western Martin County as open land, then sprawl should be the last thing we want to see. Smart development needs to consider the cost of land, not only to the developer for his proposal but also to the community.
Single-story fast-food restaurants or standalone strip malls are a sea of unused parking lots for most of the day, surrounded by unattractive buildings. Martin County has probably 30% too much retail space and some of that space is functionally and physically obsolete. Shopping centers and malls that are not attached to offices and homes waste valuable real estate. Our future development should not have the characteristics of the mid-20th century as we enter the third decade of the 21st.
If we cluster development to have small villages instead of suburban sprawl beginning now, we will not have to spend resources later correcting these inefficiencies. For government, it is more cost effective to provide services vertically than horizontally. Government will also collect more real estate tax per buildable foot, as well as save a valuable commodity…undeveloped land.