Recently, Stuart has apparently offended several communities on its municipal borders.

In both instances, developers have proposals to build multi-family projects on vacant land. Both are located on major thoroughfares. What they are attempting to do is bring new housing to the City that actually looks like it belongs in an urban setting. It’s the kind of housing everyone claims we need until it is next to your home.

The first is on East Ocean Blvd nestled next to Kingswood which is in the City. Kingswood is an over age 55 community. Their residents are apparently deathly afraid of having families with children living next to them. At the last LPA meeting on February 20, Kingswood resident after resident voiced concerns regarding the proximity that they would have to the greatest evil they can imagine which, apparently, are kids.

Perhaps this is an outgrowth of an increasingly selfish society. Just imagine if these same individuals were objecting to new neighbors based on race, ethnicity, religion, or a myriad of other unacceptable reasons. How about if a developer wanted to build an over-55 community in the middle of a family neighborhood, and the kids objected to grandma and grandpa moving in.

The second project is fronting Federal Highway off Harrison Street in South Stuart. The developer wants to build 7 four-story buildings on 13.9 acres consisting of 280 apartments with amenities. There are single family homes in a development known as Springtree surrounding the proposed site to the rear. They are objecting because of traffic, density and the height of the buildings. At least they are not worried about the characteristics of the new occupants.

Humans are programmed to hate change. Change to our daily routine. Change to our diet. And definitely change to our surroundings. If it was a vacant piece of land when we moved here, then it should remain as such even though the current location of my house or condo was once a vacant piece of real estate.

If you live within the City of Stuart, on its borders or within the Urban Services Boundary, those vacant lots next to you are going to be developed at some point in the near or far future. Those strip centers that are now nearly empty are going to be re-purposed or demolished to make way for something new and probably bigger.

You cannot claim to care about our waterways and then object when vacant land in cities, CRAs, and within the Urban Services Boundary are built upon. The alternative is sprawl. The alternative is more and more congestion on our roadways. The alternative is more concrete and less open space in the western part of the county.

Single family homes are expensive to build and then to own. Realistically, fewer and fewer of us can afford or want to live in these homes. During the Springtree presentation at the City, a picture was shown of a four-story condo, The Edgewater, on St Lucie Crescent in Stuart which also happens to be my neighborhood.

This condominium is surrounded by townhouses, single-family homes, rental apartment buildings, and an office building. My mother-in-law lived at that building for thirty years. My wife and I had an apartment there as our Stuart home for 10 years. For the past 15 years, we have lived in a single-family home that we built less than 500 feet from that building. There are no setbacks or trees to hide the site and certainly not a 350-foot preserve and 50-foot additional planted setback as is planned for the development near Springtree. It is a cohesive, friendly, diverse neighborhood where everyone, for the most part, gets along with each other.

There really is no sustainable path forward if we continue with the Florida sprawl. Young people can’t afford to spend $500,000 to buy a home. Most people can’t afford those prices. Slowly, we are pricing ourselves out of affordable, workforce, and middle-income housing in Martin County. This is the legacy of NIMBY. Most Martin residents’ visions are nothing should be built, but if something does have to be, make it a single-family sprawl development. Oh, and no children or neighbors, please.