How many times can you write about the coming of Costco?

It seems many times. That is because you are not writing about just Costco but what it has come to represent to Stuart and all of Martin County. It is a touchstone or metaphor for what the soul of the county and city will be. The concept of Costco has become a symbol for the end of paradise or the beginning of enlightenment.

For years I have heard people say that Martin County could become a paradise lost. Just last week a woman that moved here from Miami to a just-finished development was claiming a new apartment complex was unacceptable because it would change Martin County’s character. A few years earlier, someone else said the same thing about why the development where she now lives should not be built.

Rick Hartman, who is a rancher, real estate broker, and developer tells a story about a meeting he attended. People were complaining about how a new proposed development would change things for the worse. He asked the person standing next to him where he lived? When the person answered Rick went on to tell him that as a boy he had hunted where his house now stands That he and his father would cut down a Christmas tree there each year. Rick said, “Your moving here changed the character of my surroundings. Should your home not have been built?”

I will bet many of us can tell such stories. Native Americans were telling those stories when the Pilgrims arrived. Our surroundings change. It is inevitable.

Martin County has had an aversion to building. Stuart has stayed about the same for the past 50 years. Even if all the approved development in both is built, the population is still projected to grow no more that 2% per year for the next 30 years. Not exactly Port St. Lucie in its scope or breath.

At present, we are not even building enough replacement housing for people who are already here. Never mind for those that want to come from Miami and live our “bucolic” lifestyle.

When you think about it, all of Stuart is an infill project. Costco is considered an infill project with the plan for 396 rental units, a gas station, and restaurants. Where would you have people live and work in the endangered wetlands that we have? Density is the friend of the environmentalist. Adaptive reuse of existing sites such as underutilized strip malls and larger retail plazas is useful for the goal of preventing sprawl.

Martin County is not going to become Dante’s “Seventh Circle of Hell” which how many envision Broward County. The county is beginning to see that proper planning and zoning can direct development away from the outskirts and into its CRAs and more eastern areas. That is where the infrastructure is already in place. And regarding schools, I keep hearing that they will become inundated with new students when in fact they have fewer students now than they did before.

Costco symbolizes neither an overdeveloped future nor a prosperous one. What it really symbolizes is another step in our evolution. For Stuart and Martin County need to have more economic diversity. This is just one more step along the way.