Review of book, Green Empire

[Cil]

For #3, St. Joe is building more middle class and moderate income housing in others areas, just not Walton County. Hopefully at some point they'll join up with Sandestin and work on some service industry employee housing issues that are only getting worse here.

It's good to know that there is some lower income housing, the whole situation reminds me quite a bit of Aspen. People commute there from outlying areas.

I wish St. Joe well. Development's going to happen, and they seem to be making more of an effort to do it right and well than most developers would. They're just not my cuppa. We end up in Grayton Beach pretty much every Sunday in the summer because it's a real place, quirks, warts, nice dogs and all. But we'll very rarely go east from there because Watercolor and Seaside are just a little too movie set for our tastes. (and yeah, I think there's a whole deeper irony with Seaside getting used for Truman Show)

heh
Beachmouse, I know what you mean. They look charming but there is a bit of a synthetic feel to those places. (BTW, are dogs not welcome there?)
I guess I look at the situation two different ways.
I appreciate that some folks simply want to get away from everything.
Maybe I am wrong, but I would think people would like a teeny bit of infrastructure.
I am used to living in a community where we walk a lot; I don't necessarily get into a car every single time I leave the house.
We checked out the entire area two years ago. We liked Grayton the best.
But we also liked PSJ and Apalachicola.

 

[Smiling JOe]

(BTW, are dogs not welcome there?)

WaterColor's park is definitely dog friendly. They have a couple of doggy poop stations with clean up bags and doggy poop trash can. (Remember not to eat the herbs -- my dogs like to pee on the Rosemary.)

 

[beachmouse]

It's good to know that there is some lower income housing, the whole situation reminds me quite a bit of Aspen. People commute there from outlying areas.

Lots of people who work service industry here year round do have some very long commutes. I've heard of people who work at Seaside, and live in Alabama. Though that's kind of an extreme example there are still many folks commuting from Crestview, DeFuniak, Bruce, etc. It's not an ideal situation, but it is workable.

What they need to really address is the seasonal worker situation. The Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Bulgarian, etc. college kids are going to keep coming here even though the housing situation is horrendous because they just can't make that kind of money back home. And those kids have no cars so you can't just expect them to find a place inland and drive in every day.

Sandestin is doing the right thing by developing dormitories for seasonal workers, but a lot of smaller businesses that end up relying on the college kids just don't have the resources to tackle the issue.

 

[lenzoe]

I thought the book promoted very cautious optimism.

I think that depends on whether you agree that what's good for St. Joe's is good for Florida.

St. Joe's PR department wants you to believe that the company is in partnership with Florida and is developing in the best interests of the public. So far they've done very nice, very high-end developments and they are working on infrastructure issues that will spur more development for them, and as a side-effect will benefit the existing populations in those areas -- as long as you define benefit as having greater access to certain services like air travel, education, better roadways, medical facilities, improving economic development, and a nearby Publix store.

But St. Joe's is a corporation and corporations by definition have to look out for what's best for their bottom line. Sometimes that's in agreement with what the general public wants and needs. Sometimes it will not be, I guarantee you.

I don't know a lot about the company, but from what I've seen, its only asset is its massive real estate holdings in NW Florida, and its business now is development. The way it's planning to unlock the value of those holdings is by developing. Lots of land, lots of places to develop. Those two facts together, in the long run, are not motivators to restrain development or to promote serious conservation. Increasing, unchecked sprawl was one of the risks the book mentioned.

If you define benefit as wide-open, pristine, protected forests and wetlands and little traffic with populations in concentrated areas to preserve that land, you might have a different view than optimism. Fatalism is a word that comes to mind. One thing I often hear in reference to St. Joe's is that development is going to happen, somebody's going to develop it, and St. Joe's seems to be better at it than most.

Perhaps. But if that's the starting point for the discussion, then the ending point isn't hard to predict -- pretty much exactly what has already happened in South Florida. I think the people of NorthWest Florida really do still have a choice in the matter, but not for much longer.

As to whether the company is a good investment or not -- no idea. Stock prices depend not just on how the company does but on how well people expect the company to do. For now, I'm sticking with real estate, which in my opinion is easier to understand.

 

[Kurt]

Impressive post lenzoe. :clap_1:

 

[beachmouse]

I guess I prefer realist to fatalist in some ways. People are going to keep wanting to move down here, and many of them will end up living out that dream. Every day, there are more than a thousand brand new Floridians, and they need to live/work/recreate somewhere. And for some of them that somewhere is here.

There are things St. Joe has done that I'm not crazy about, but at least they seem willing to try to create something sustainable and are working with the state to permanently set aside a lot of acreage for conservation purposes.

 

[Kurt]

Old guy playing golf in the movie "Sunshine State": "Nature is overrated".

 

[Cil]

Yeah, that rich old golfing guy is Alan King--well cast. I remember him saying that.
Another thing I remember him saying is that what Florida developers do is put "nature on a leash."
As the Green Empire develops and changes over time, I guess it remains to be seen what the final cost will be in terms of both environmental as well as social issues.
The Empire has certainly come a long way from $11 an acre.

 

[SlowMovin]

If you define benefit as wide-open, pristine, protected forests and wetlands and little traffic with populations in concentrated areas to preserve that land...

We don't have that now. The only pristine, protected forests are the state ones. St. Joe is developing land it owns which, by definition, is not protected (not particularly pristine, either, since much of it was logged repeatedly over the years and is now simply re-planted pines).

 

[Paula]

I read the book and saw the movie Sunshine State (good but slow movie -- was fine to watch on an airplane on DVD). Development in the panhandle ("great northwest of Florida" as it has been renamed by St. Joe) will not going to stop for sure, but discussion groups like this and voters and the press can have some influence as we saw from the recent brown sand issue. St. Joe seems very concerned about their image and what the press says about them. They like to win and publicize environmental awards.