Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

by Carl Hiaasen

  You could flush yourself silly, but you'll never catch up to them boys in the Capitol.

  Speedway lessees race to the bank

  April 13, 1997

  When Ralph Sanchez and Wayne Huizenga joined forces at the Homestead motor speedway, you knew good things would happen.

  To Ralph and Wayne, of course. Not necessarily to Homestead.

  Sure enough, Sanchez and Huizenga are about to roar away from the troubled racetrack with at least $10 million each, while the flat-broke city limply waves a checkered flag.

  Sanchez claims the place can't make it without hosting the popular Winston Cup stock car races—something that won't occur unless he and Huizenga sell out to NASCAR impresario Bill France.

  France didn't want the track unless the lease was watered down. Last week the city obliged.

  "I walked out of the council chambers sick to my stomach. They gave away the farm," says Steve Losner, a lawyer whose family has been in Homestead for 70 years.

  It was as predictable as it is pathetic. The 65,000-seat motorsports complex was built with public funds, including $31 million from county tourist taxes and bond sales. How much will Dade get from the Sanchez sellout? Zippo.

  Homestead itself has spent $8 million on the track, and is in debt for another $25 million. Its take from the new deal: nada. Amazing, considering that the city is deeply in the red, and that workers are being laid off.

  Meanwhile, Wayne and Ralph can peel rubber on their way to the bank. It was a match made in heaven, two masters of finagling public funds for private projects.

  By selling his share of the Homestead lease, Sanchez would maintain a perfect record: In 15 years he's never operated a racetrack that made money. Oh, he made plenty—but not the races, and not the municipalities that subsidized them.

  After skipping out of downtown Miami, Sanchez found fresh suckers in hurricane-battered Homestead. True to form, he miscalculated the cost of the new speedway by about 500 percent, and his lofty promise of reviving South Dade's economy turned out to be hot air.

  Even the track itself has been a headache, beset with costly design flaws that cast large doubts upon Sanchez's touted racing expertise. Huizenga came in as a partner by loaning $20 million for new construction.

  Now Sanchez says the racetrack is "overbuilt." Seriously, that's what he says. He told New Times: "If I didn't have to sell I wouldn't sell, but this is the reality of the situation."

  Here's the reality: He and Huizenga are making out like bandits, while taxpayers are once again eating dust.

  Of all Sanchez's failures, Homestead will be his most lucrative. In a meeting with South Dade business leaders on April 3, he admitted that he and Huizenga each will receive about $ 10 million if France buys them out.

  Which seems likely, since the track's new tenant is no longer required to share race profits with the city—one of several outlandish concessions approved by council members.

  The hosing was orchestrated by none other than Alex Muxo, who did plenty of damage as Homestead's city manager. Now conveniently employed by Huizenga, Muxo met individually with council members at the racetrack.

  His message: This thing won't ever fly without a Winston Cup weekend.

  In other words, forget the Indy cars. Forget the Jiffy Lube. Forget everything Sanchez promised four years ago.

  Many folks in Homestead won't forget. Neither will some of the politicians who gave him that first $31 million. As former Metro Commissioner Maurice Ferre lamented: "I still wonder how we could have allowed this to happen."

  Join the club.

  Choked on Growth

  If three's a crowd, what is 5 million?

  September 13, 1985

  Something dismal to contemplate next time you're stuck in highway traffic:

  This week the National Planning Association predicted that Florida will have 5.7 million more residents by the year 2000 than it had in 1980.The Census Bureau forecasts 7.7 million, though this is considered high. And the University of Florida's Bureau of Economic and Business Research conservatively puts the growth at 5 million.

  Which is still equivalent to absorbing the entire population of Missouri. Or, put another way, if the number of new people invading Florida during the next 15 years formed their own state, it would be more populous than 38 other states.

  Incredibly, there are those walking among us who think this is wonderful news, and who are busily restructuring their banks, mapping new condominium clusters and dreaming up bigger and better trailer parks.

  Meanwhile, growing numbers of dispirited Floridians wonder where it will all end, and worry about already-frayed quality of life.

  "You're talking about a 50 percent increase in a 20-year period. In terms of numbers of bodies, it's a tremendous increase," says Stanley K. Smith of the University of Florida.

  Among the fastest growing counties are Palm Beach, Lee, Collier, St. Lucie and Martin. Broward is still growing, though not nearly as fast as before, while Dade County is stagnant, its new arrivals nearly matched by those packing up and heading north.

  As expected, most newcomers hail from places that are either cold, crowded, dirty or economically depressed. By the turn of the century, they will have enlarged our numbers to 14.7 million.

  As John D. MacDonald has observed, almost everyone who moves down here wants to slam the door behind him. This might be selfish, but it's also understandable: It doesn't take a disciple of Thoreau to notice the loveliness of Florida wane in direct proportion to humanity.

  "At some point," Smith says, "it's possible that the quality of life will become so unattractive that no one will want to move here. That'll solve your growth problems. But that's like cutting off your arm to save the whole body."

  This year the Legislature passed a "growth management" law, supposedly to impose order on the state's tumultuous development.

  Frankly, the notion of "orderly growth" is about as tangible as the tooth fairy. Growth that is orderly would break a century-old tradition of lust, greed and wantonness. Already three Florida counties (Palm Beach, Broward and Dade) hold more human beings (3.5 million) than the states of Mississippi or Colorado or Oregon or Oklahoma, to name a few.

  No governor in our history has voiced as much concern for the trampling of Florida as Bob Graham, but I doubt that even he has the clout to put on the brakes. He is considered bold for endorsing "growth management," but he'd be laughed off his lectern for suggesting a growth cap.

  So we're stuck with this stampede.

  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.

  Highway opens one of last frontiers to overgrowth

  July 16, 1986

  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 gro
wn 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.

  Buying a piece of Florida? See it like a native

  February 16, 1987

  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.

  More to the point, why would anyone want to sell their lovely GDC home anyway? The whole idea is to move to Florida and spend eternity in paradise, assuming the roads eventually get paved.

  Instead of whining about it, I say we applaud GDC for goosing up its prices and discouraging resales. Florida needs citizens who stay put, not buy-and-sell vagabonds who disturb the stability of a carefully planned community.

  Even more important—and forgive us for getting a little misty-eyed—is preserving Florida's glorious tradition of hawking itself as shamelessly and profitably as is humanly possible. If someone sells you swampland, it's because someone sold swampland to their fathers, and perhaps even to their grandfathers before that.

  Maybe it's in our blood, or maybe it's just something in the water, but it is part of our heritage. Thank heavens it's still alive.

  Maybe first Thanksgiving soured early

  November 24, 1989

  A University of Florida historian reports that, contrary to American folklore, the first Thanksgiving did not take place in 1621 after the Pilgrims' arrival at Plymouth Rock.

  Rather, the original feast supposedly was held 56 years earlier at St. Augustine when Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles invited the Timucua Indians to dinner. The prayerful gathering was called to celebrate the Spaniards' safe landing on the Florida coast.

  If true, this revisionist account of the holiday raises important historical questions. Why did tradition embrace the New England Thanksgiving instead of the original Florida Thanksgiving? What really happened on that autumn evening in 1565 when the Spaniards and the Timucua broke bread? Did something go terribly wrong to spoil the occasion? Perhaps it all went sour on the day after the big cookout, when ...

  "Chief, you look awful—what's the matter?"

  "It's those damn garbanzo beans. I
should never have let Pedro talk me into a second helping."

  "Speaking of Pedro, he and his men were up at the crack of dawn this morning. They chopped down many of our finest trees, and now they seem to be building something on our beach."

  "I wondered who was causing all that racket. What are they making, another one of those ugly forts?"

  "Not exactly, Chief. Pedro calls it a high-rise."

  "I don't understand—what is that word, 'high-rise'? How would we say it in Timucuan?"

  "Literally, it means Tall Box Full of Noisy Strangers."

  "But why would Pedro put such an unnatural thing on such a beautiful shore!"

  "He says he had a spiritual vision, Chief. He says that thousands upon thousands more settlers will soon be coming to Florida, and they will all need a place to sleep and eat and give thanks."

  "What's he got against good old-fashioned thatched huts?"

  "Pedro says the new settlers will want something fancier than palmetto. He says they'll be willing to pay major trinkets and beads to live in a high place with a good view of the ocean."

  "This high-rise—exactly how high will it be?"

  "Higher than the tallest pines, Chief. Higher than the eagles soar."

  "Ha! I think our friend Pedro had a little too much grape last night."

  "He seems quite sober, Chief. And his men are swift carpenters. I don't mind telling you, the rest of the tribe is very concerned."

  "I, too, am worried—and surprised. They seemed like such nice fellows, these explorers. Much friendlier than the French. I can't believe they'd want to build a giant box on our beach and fill it with noisy strangers. What're we going to do?"

  "Well, Chief, we could always eat them. Like we did with those Huguenots."

  "Yeah, and we all had the trots for a month afterward, remember? Let's try to think of a different way to discourage Pedro."