Sally Swartz, columnist
Picture a town center with condos and apartments for 260 people in two- and three-story buildings. Add two restaurants, a food market and boat-related stores below 300-square-foot apartments. Toss in a marina with 169 boat slips, a fuel dock and a 60-foot lighthouse with dockmaster housing upstairs.
Cram it all onto 11.6 acres between County Road 707/Dixie Highway and the St. Lucie River in Rio (Martin residents say RYE-oh, not REE-oh).
That’s the plan architect Raul Ocampo and iSTAR Financial’s Donald R. Mears sketched for about 50 Rio residents at a recent Neighborhood Advisory Committee meeting.
The mixed-use development, in the Rio Community Development Area, would be built in phases on riverfront land where Jack Baker’s Lobster Shanty restaurant and bar once stood. Old septic tanks, grease traps, a crumbling marina and tons of concrete rubble remain on the site.
In 2007, different developers proposed Stuart Harbour Yacht Club on the same land. That project included two boat barns, a 60-room motel and restaurant, condos and commercial areas. After two years of missed deadlines, county officials killed the proposal.
iStar bought the property in 2010, but had financial problems after the housing market crashed. Company officials reinvented themselves as developers to recover investments on failed condo projects in Miami.
Developers have given the project a “placeholder” name — Stuart Harbor/Rio Town Center. Ocampo speaks of the marina as if development plans are a done deal. But a spokesman for South Florida Water Management District said a developer’s representative met with district permit reviewers two months ago and has not submitted an application.
Ocampo said the proposed 300-square-foot apartments are about the size of some Rio cottages, but admits development is “part science and part voodoo. There’s nothing comparable in the area.”
Architects‘ drawings are mistaken in showing green space on land that actually has houses on it. Developers said they could be interested in buying nearby land. Who owns land and where are important points, particularly since Kevin Freeman, Martin County’s community development director, told the crowd their property values will increase if the project is built. Some followed Ocampo and Mears out of the meeting to offer the developers their homes and land.
Julie Preast, who headed the Neighborhood Advisory Committee for eight years, and her husband Ed own seven parcels of land in Rio, all purchased in 2012 and 2013, according to county records. Preast, who seems to be to Rio what former Stuart Mayor Joan Jefferson was to Stuart redevelopment, helped craft a plan for Rio’s CRA to buy and develop property. Then she left the NAC, and with her husband bought land along CR 707/Dixie Highway near iStar’s proposed project. The Preasts plan to build Rio Porches, small cottages where Rainbow Cottages once stood.
Just as some questioned whether it was a conflict of interest for Jefferson to make a profit on downtown Stuart property, some Rio residents question Preast’s motives. Preast said she is putting her house on the line to build the new cottages. She supports the iStar proposal and acted as greeter at the NAC meeting.
Preast said the iStar development would return needed restaurants to Rio. But residents blame the county’s long project rebuilding CR 707 for putting restaurants out of business. Residents also say they worry about public access, lack of parking, and buildings that would block water views.
Resident Benjamin d’Aronzo, a freelance environmental pro with Enviro-Force, which monitors seagrass, fish species and other local conditions, criticized iStar for not making environmental impact information available and for downplaying the impacts a 169-slip marina would have on the river.
“There would be a huge increase in boat traffic,” he said, “plus dredging, seawalls and other impacts not in line with environmental concerns about the river.”
Outside of downtown Stuart, mixed-use developments, d’Aronzo said, have not worked well in Martin. As examples, he cites Stuart Harborage, condos near a restaurant north of the Roosevelt Bridge, and Renar River Place in Jensen Beach, a controversial eyesore which can’t fill all its retail and residential spaces.
Martin’s growth management staff found 27 pages of problems with the iStar application which must be solved before the county commission decides on the project.
But concerns about the developer, conflicts of interest, the track record of mixed use projects in Martin and impacts on the river raise even more questions about this odd proposal.
Sally Swartz, a former member of The Post Editorial Board, blogs about Treasure Coast issues. Her e-mail address is sdswartz42@att.net
