Guest columnist: Sale of Adams Ranch will preserve rural lands, ensure controlled development

By MIKE ADAMS
Guest Columnist
TCPalm.com
August 27, 2006

Adams Ranch has been approached many times over the years with offers to sell our land. Our desire is to keep our cattle ranch, which has been in the family since 1937, profitable and productive while remaining good stewards of the land. Florida's Rural Land Stewardship program, however, is of interest to us because it ties land development to land conservation. It addresses the needs of commercial agricultural operations like no other program in the country.

The Rural Land Stewardship Program is an incentive-based system that encourages the voluntary preservation and private stewardship of natural resources and retention of rural uses and agriculture. It also accommodates future growth in a more sustainable way.

After two years of work between Adams Ranch, St. Lucie County, Family Lands Remembered, Florida Conservancy and Development Group and the community, this new program has been drafted and redrafted into a workable plan customized for use in St. Lucie County.

The Stewardship Easement on Adams Ranch will forever remove the development rights, conditional uses, and earth mining from about 12,000 acres of Adams Ranch — at no cost to the public. The most significant hammocks, wetlands and other high-value natural areas will be forever protected — at no cost to the public. Control of invasive exotics like Brazilian peppers and tropical soda apples will continue as our ongoing commitment to land stewardship — at no cost to the public.

The Stewardship Program lets us continue the agricultural use of the property so the land will remain a productive working landscape and part of the tax and employment base of St. Lucie County.

Cloud Grove represents the development side of the program. As required by state statute, the new town will not be a cost or burden to the county or local residents. The town will be a sustainable, mixed-use community. It will include all the necessary roads, water treatment, schools, parks, law enforcement, fire department, and other infrastructure and services. The development of Cloud Grove will pay for the conservation on Adams Ranch.

St. Lucie County will be able to forever conserve 12,000 acres of land that can never be developed. The program will enable Adams Ranch to continue operating our cattle ranch and stewardship of the land. The program will enable the county to accommodate future growth with a well-planned, sustainable community. The Stewardship Program raises the bar by setting new standards for land development, agriculture and conservation.

St. Lucie County commissioners will vote on this program Monday at 6 p.m.

Adams is president of Adams Ranch Inc., Fort Pierce.

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