Stuart Costco Proves A Success
The Stuart Costco opened and 1000 people were in line, some as early as 5:00 AM on opening day.
For all the naysayers who kept telling anyone who would listen that people didn’t want the store, they have now been proven wrong. People were flocking to the site to sign up for membership cards to begin buying cheaper gas days before the grand opening. People shouldn’t be surprised by the outcome.
I have been told that by opening day 6000 new Costco Members had been added to their rolls from the area. Even now there is a line to purchase membership in the store. And yet there have been no major backups or traffic concerns.
All along, the emails that were received by the City of Stuart overwhelmingly supported the project. While there was a small minority that didn’t want it and even a smaller subset that tried their darndest to sabotage it, there were commissioners who saw through it all and weighed the overwhelming benefits of it moving forward.
When I first came to Stuart 30 years ago, there was nothing along Kanner Highway from the I-95 exchange to almost Martin County High School. Those who were born and bred here can tell more stories about what was once considered the end of the town’s limits. The point being Martin County has changed quite a bit.
Did citizens really believe that a 50-acre old farm site within the city limits would never be developed? The only way that was going to occur was if it were placed in conservation. One of the lead proponents of not having anything built on the parcel was a family member of the farmers who actually sold the land. All her family had to do to avoid the development was to continue farming or donate the land to the city or county for a park instead of cashing out and making money.
In the last week or so in South Stuart on Federal Highway, a project was pulled by Mario Murgado and his partners to build a few new luxury car dealerships and an intense multi-family project on the rear portion. The rear backs up onto the Willoughby Country Club and the residents living there were not pleased. After a long process including going before the LPA, the developer decided to pull it for now instead of risk defeat.
The two projects are a lesson on what a no growth commission achieves and what a smart growth commission did achieve. Commissioner Merritt Matheson, along with the other then commissioners, ended up having the developer of the Costco site agree to more than twenty conditions including building and dedicating a through road to alleviate congestion to the city, creating a park around a retention pond that was made to have the shape of a natural lake, a reduction in the number of apartments to be built, a traffic light if approved by FDOT which it was, and many more beneficial items.
By contrast, the current commission was willing to say just one word to the Murgado project developer …no. There was no bargaining, no reasoning, only no. I can almost guarantee what comes next.
Murgado will wait and see what comes out of this session of the legislature. The bills pending are all good news for him. It appears Tallahassee is tired of Martin County’s way of stopping any project possible. It may even have a particular dislike for Boss Collins and his Politburo and their special disregard for property rights.
Even if none of those bills pass, Murgado will play the Live Local card and wedge as many apartments as possible into the back of the property. And guess what? There will be no commission meeting on the subject. The only thing that will need to happen is administrative approval by the Development Department.
When confronted with a wall, people tend to go over or under, but they don’t stand there and allow themselves to be stopped. The difference between Matheson and the man that beat him by 96 votes, Boss Collins, is that one is a statesman and the other an ideologue. Matheson made a deal that resulted in a project that the community obviously wanted…one that will bring millions of dollars into the coffers of the city and county. Collins on the other hand deprived the city of millions and probably will be the single most contributing factor to having a much worse project move forward.
There will be an election in less than two years where Collins will be running either for re-election to the city commission or for a county commission seat. Either jurisdiction cannot afford to have a performative official instead of a real one. We elect commissioners to govern which includes sometimes making hard decisions. Not ideologues to make points.
