I am pleased to now serve on the Stuart City Commission. How we grow as a city going forth is the most important issue we face. It will be critical that the right choices are made. We can absolutely continue to enjoy the Stuart lifestyle while increasing our population, businesses and jobs. We need to provide reasons for our young people to stay in the city to raise their families and grow their businesses in an inviting environment. The development of the Sailfish ball fields will be one of the ways to accomplish this.

Before explaining my current thoughts on Sailfish, I want to mention my background. I am currently a licensed real estate broker in Florida, New York and Connecticut and, in the past, have been licensed in other additional states. For over 40 years, I have focused on commercial real estate as an owner, manager and broker. I have taught real estate courses and hold the CPM and CCIM designations.  While I have never practiced in Stuart, I am quite familiar with how real estate is developed. This development will be critical to our future.

Within the next year or so, the city will look to develop those fields. What I don’t want to see happen is the city administration creating an RFP that will preclude many of our local builders and developers from participating. If it is one large, 8- plus-acre package without our city designating the grid pattern and infrastructure, I fear that we will have something that will not fit the character of our city.

The reason to develop those fields is to increase population and ad valorem taxes. We also need and want connectivity which would be provided by a street grid pattern aligning with the rest of the city. What I do not want to see happen is a gated community closed off from the rest of Stuart. We don’t need cul de sacs and walls to keep neighbors apart. Why we choose to live in Stuart over the suburbs is because it is a city.  I don’t want Stuart to develop enclaves with walls and gates that separate one resident from another.

The best way that this can be accomplished is by the city creating the grid pattern, designate mixed use (retail and residential multifamily) development, and selling individual lots for development along that grid pattern. This will allow our local Stuart and Martin county builders to buy, finance and construct almost immediately accomplishing our stated goals. The history of Stuart is not the grandiose but the manageable. Our development should not be based on someone from Broward, Palm Beach or New York sweeping in with plans that never quite come to fruition. Just look to North Point which eight years after a lease being signed is still not developed, built and creating income for us.

I do believe we can accomplish our goals of more people, jobs and businesses. Let us not play Monopoly with this project but organically allow development to happen. Instead of elaborate plans with Disney like fantasies, we should use the building and zoning rules we have to build this addition to Stuart. We have chosen to live here because of the way our city has developed and grown. I propose to continue that development and growth in a way we have already embraced and that has brought us our enviable way of life.