Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Developers along the Palm Beach and Treasure Coasts can salivate at the good fortune coming their way, but those living there might ponder the lesson of boomed-out Dade County.

Dade has stopped growing because it is perceived as crowded, volatile, crime-ridden and racially tense. It is seen less as a community than a newly urbanized war zone; a place with too many people, too many problems and too few opportunities.

Broward, fast bloating, will be the next to bottom out. In a few years Palm Beach County will probably follow.

By the time it all goes sour, when even Disney and sunny beaches can't trick people into coming, the big-money boys will have made their killing and hustled elsewhere along the Sun Belt.

Leaving everyone else to stew in traffic, and try to remember why they moved here in the first place.

The Romans managed to build 53,000 miles of road without once celebrating the achievement by dressing up in frog costumes.

Things have changed since 312 B.C. The roads are better, but the PR is worse.

Thursday brings another official opening of the Sawgrass Expressway in West Broward County. This opening—marked by the imposition of a $1.50 toll—should not be confused with two previous official openings, at which great political merriment and self-congratulation occurred.

The highlight of these seemingly endless festivities has been the introduction of Cecil B. Sawgrass, a grown man dressed like a frog. Cecil B. Sawgrass is the expressway's official mascot. If you live in Broward, you got postcards in the mail with Cecil's green likeness inviting you to try the new expressway. "Hop to it!" Cecil implored. And, sure enough, if you drive the Sawgrass you'll see dozens of Cecil's little frog cousins squashed dead on the fresh asphalt.

The Romans had too much class to invent animal mascots for their roads. Of course, they never had to sell a $200 million bond issue either. These days, we are told, highways must be promoted like breakfast cereal, imprinted on the public consciousness. This is especially true when the highway doesn't really go anywhere that the public wants to go.

The Sawgrass Expressway is a 23-mile incision that runs near the Broward-Palm Beach boundary, then jogs south along the westernmost fringe of civilization. It runs parallel to the dikes that contain the submerged Everglades conservation areas, vital South Florida watersheds. Someday the Sawgrass will link with I-595.

There's not much to see on the highway now, and that's the beauty of it. There are cattle grazing in open fields, hawks circling in the sky, and bass hitting in the canals (at least the canals that weren't grossly over-dredged by road contractors). Across the dike are breathtaking waves of sawgrass and virgin wetlands.

It won't stay this way long, which explains all the celebrating. The sound of bulldozers is the sound of money.

Don't think for a minute that this road was built in 15 months because thousands of commuters were begging for it (try to get a pothole plugged that fast). And don't think it was built to ease the deadly chaos of I-95, because it runs nowhere near the interstate.

The Sawgrass was built for one reason only: to open the last frontiers of Broward County for rapid development. The value of sodden rural property tends to appreciate when somebody graciously runs an expressway to it. It's like Christmas in July.

It's just progress, right? If you like truck routes, it's progress.

Twenty-five years ago Dade County planners exulted in the opening of what was then called the Palmetto Bypass. The highway's purported mission was to carry motorists on a western loop around Miami's congested central core. Within months of its inaugural, the sparse Palmetto had attracted a bottling plant, three industrial parks, a machine shop, a metal shop, and a tractor plant. The rest is traffic history.

Today, if you were choosing the most unsightly, treacherous and truck-heavy highway in America, the Palmetto would be in the running for grand prize. It's a mess.

Well, guess what's already happening along the perimeters of the Sawgrass Expressway? Coral Ridge Properties just gobbled up 610 acres. Gulfstream Land is planning 29,000 residential units. Stiles Development Corp. is promising 6 million square feet of office and industrial space—as much as all downtown Fort Lauderdale.

The hype is that the Sawgrass was built to alleviate future traffic. The opposite is true. The plan is for more, not less. The plan is a new western front ripe for mailing and townhousing.

The plan is to scour every last available acre.

Funny how nobody wants to come right out and say it. Instead they send a frog to do a buzzard's job.

Forgive a little boosterism, but I'm getting sick and tired of people casting aspersions on the land-sales business here in the Sunshine State. Geez, some customers want everything their way.

Last Friday's front-page story about the mammoth General Development Corporation was the last straw. To summarize, over the past three years GDC has received more than 400 complaints from dissatisfied land and home buyers, many of whom say they didn't get what they paid for.

Well, PARDON US FOR LIVING, OK? I mean, this is Florida. There's a certain, uh, image to uphold.

As you know, GDC is one of these megacompanies that gobbles up tracts of real estate and turns them into "planned communities" that are all named Port Something-or-other, but aren't really ports at all.

Flying over a planned community, you marvel at how the miracle of geometry allows so many houses to be squished onto so many side-by-side lots. This stylish platting technique is modeled after the marine barracks at Camp Lejeune.

Such developments have attracted thousands of new residents to Florida, most of whom would never dream of griping. They're just mighty glad to be here.

As a convenience for out-of-state customers, GDC's mannerly and low-key sales force is scattered throughout the country. What happens is that you go into the land-sales office and a very nice man or woman helps you pick out a lot—thus saving you the hassle of flying all the way down here, renting a car, buying a map and trying to locate the darn thing yourself—and the bugs! Forget it.

You'd think buyers would be grateful for this service, right? Wrong. Some crybabies have had the gall to complain that the land they ended up with wasn't the land they meant to buy. Some lots turned out to be worth only a fraction of the purchase price, and one customer said a canal near his lot turned out to be a "swamp."

Talk about picky. Hey, pal, ever heard of a canoe?

Customers who buy GDC land site-unseen are offered a company-paid trip to visit their new property. By taking the trip, however, they waive their option to cancel the sales contract. Some might say this policy is unfair and defeats the whole purpose of the trip, but look at the other side. Think of how many freezing snowbirds would try to weasel a free vacation to Florida this way!

Then there's the recurring problem with property appraisals. It seems that when residents try to sell their GDC lots or homes, the appraisals sometimes come up just a tad short of what was originally paid. One couple purchased a house for $65,000 in 1984; just a year later, an independent appraiser valued the place at $40,500. Another woman bought a house at Port Malabar for $67,000, and eight months later it was appraised at $43,000.

I'm sure there are excellent reasons for these minor discrepancies. So much can happen to a new house in eight months or a year—the paint can fade, the dog can mess up the carpets, the sprinklers can turn the sidewalks orange. Fifty bucks here and there, and before you know it, you've got $24,000 worth of serious depreciation.