Enjoy snowbird traffic on Sebastian, Vero Beach roads? Could be standard in 5 to 10 years
The nearly full Breeze Airways flight from Westchester County Airport Nov. 20 was a hint.
The normally short ride home was another, as we drove 15 blocks out of the way to avoid stop-and-go traffic.
Snowbirds are back.
As Vero Beach citrus leader Dan Richey, president of Riverfront Packing Co., pointed out last week on Bob Soos’ radio show, winter visitors are important for our economy.
“It's nice to have tourism as a big economic driver of the area,” Richey told Soos. “But it certainly creates a little bit of inconvenience for those of us that are just coming off a summer where it was a little quieter.”
Winter season traffic will be the norm in five or 10 years if Indian River County grows the way it’s projected to, said Richey, chairman of the county’s Planning and Zoning Commission in the 1980s when it devised its first comprehensive land use plan.
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After hearing a recent presentation by Ken Johnson, associate dean of graduate programs and a real estate expert at Florida Atlantic University, Richey said it was critical local residents take the time to tell county officials at upcoming meetings how we want the county to grow.
Do we want the area in a 25-mile radius of Vero Beach to grow the projected 24% (19% in Indian River County) to 526,518 people over the next 10 years, as Johnson reported, or would we prefer something more like St. Lucie County (26.1%), Brevard County (15.3%) or Martin County (8.7%)?
In other words, are we OK with one more person coming here on top of the four or five we have here now?
Richey suggested winter visitors add 15% to 20% to our population, primarily on Orchid Island.
“If you take these statistics and they're accurate, that's going to be the baseline,” he said. “So what you're seeing (on the road) during season will be the baseline 5 to 10 years from now.
“And then you're going to have season on top of that … so it could be quite interesting as to what our quality of life becomes.”
Perhaps it’s no big deal to the two relative newcomers to our area I overheard on the Breeze flight from Vero Beach. They loved the county's small-town atmosphere, which reminded them of their communities up north before growth there.
Plan now to preserve quality of life in Indian River County
But to folks like Richey and me ― and many others who have lived here longer than us Yankee transplants of four or five decades — Indian River County has changed dramatically, growing from less than 60,000 people when Richey came here in 1980 to about 165,000 now and 267,000 projected by 2045.
It's not the same place, for better and worse.
Richey and I are concerned if we continue to grow the wrong way, we could lose forever some things we enjoyed:
An Indian River Lagoon we feel comfortable fishing, skiing, swimming and boating in, an amazingly biodiverse waterway with thousands of species of plants and living beings.
Enough clean drinking water so we do not have to rely on technology to desalinate ocean water or send cleaned sewage water through our taps.
The environment, from the diminishing greenery alongside, for example, Jungle Trail and Indrio and Roseland roads, to the pastures and groves along 58th and 66th avenues and State Road 60. It’s good the county and Indian River Land Trust have preserved and opened to the public parks and preserves, such as rapidly diminishing scrub habitat; more will be done with overwhelming passage by voters in 2022 of a referendum to sell $50 million in bonds to buy more land.
Reasonable commutes to work, shopping and to see family and friends.
Transportation critical issue as Vero Beach stretches toward Sebastian and Fellsmere
Pro and con: : Candid observations: Here's what I saw during a three-hour tour on the Indian River Lagoon
The aforementioned growth numbers are among the reasons calls by Vero Beach council members John Carroll and Linda Moore to eliminate lanes on State Road 60 downtown are shortsighted. After negative reaction to the Twin Pairs land-reduction plan, the council may look at three other alternatives as it prepares to vote on the matter Dec. 12.
We must plan ahead for growth.
Past leaders did, in the 1970s and 1980s, ensuring the Alma Lee Loy/17th Street Bridge and Indian River Boulevard were built and State Road 60 and County Road 512, the county’s main roads to Interstate 95, were widened.
Heading north and south on roads east of 58th and 66th avenues will get even worse, so, as Richey said, widening proposals for northern 66th and 82nd avenues are critical. So is widening County Road 510, from U.S. 1 to 512.
“Will we begin to outrun our infrastructure and will we chase this forest fire from behind, kind of like an I-4 Disney?” Richey asked. “There’s always construction over there; there is always gridlock.
“It's not going to be that level. But clearly on a micro level, we might outrun our infrastructure.”
“We have to get ahead of it,” Richey said. “You don't want to have all that construction being done when you're already at max … level of usage. That's not convenient for anybody.”
Let's not repeat 60 hours of silence
Spending a week up north where I grew up driving on old, congested roads where it can take 20 minutes to go 2 miles reminded me of one of the things that attracted me to this part of Florida 40 years ago. It's what's lured folks from South Florida here.
But with national homebuilders around here gobbling up thousands of acres and eyeing tens of thousands more, including many old citrus groves, I'm concerned about our future.
There are already lots of bad developments in the pipeline here. The only way to prevent more is by getting involved now. Richey said he sat through 60 hours of meetings on the comprehensive plan almost 40 years ago with little public involvement.
That can't happen this time if we want to preserve what we love about this county, he said.
So make sure you attend these meetings at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. Wednesdays:
Nov. 29 at the Indian River County Commission chambers, 1801 27th St., Building A, Vero Beach.
Dec. 13 at the Intergenerational Recreation Center, 1590 Oslo Road, Vero Beach.
If you don't get involved now, don't complain later when that beautiful tree hammock nearby is bulldozed to make way for something you do not like.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Vero Beach area growth projections show future threats: Speak out now
