It's time to talk turkey

Let us give thanks and talk turkey.

I've just received powerful evidence of an imminent economic resurrection. Big developers expect to practice business as usual within weeks or months.

The good news arrives like a big brown bird dropped squarely in the middle of our Thanksgiving table.

Business as usual means doing it like they did back in the '80s and '90s and right up until 2006, when after years of feasting, the table collapsed under the weight of all the turkeys.

Remember when you could build, pave, draw and drain almost wherever you chose, then go sip single-malt Scotch in the clubhouse overlooking the golf course, while people bought your handiwork at exorbitant prices?

We lived well then.

And we will again.

Here's why I know we're about to turn this economy around: Developers are not dumb. Often greedy, yes, but rarely dumb. When more than one of them begins pressing local governments to approve massive projects, things are going to look up for somebody, soon.

In Collier County, landowners and their friends, pushing to develop Big Cypress Town and other communities out in panther-land east of Naples, want to get started right quick. And that's a good sign for the economy.

You know the drill from the good ol' days: They've proposed shortening the vetting process, with the approval of Commissioner Tom Henning and other officials, by rushing the committees that look at development plans. This would give two county committees (the Environmental Advisory Council and the Planning Commission) a chance to take just a single pro-forma glance at the plans, in the same room at the same time.

That's part of redesigning the rules that govern what can happen on 195,000 acres in eastern Collier, which officials call the Rural Land Stewardship Zone.

And check out this business-as-usual plan: At Big Cypress Town, they want to put up more than 3,500 homes and shops and bring in more than 20,000 people smack dab in the center of what is "panther primary habitat," according to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.

The panther habitat lies at the heart of the Rural Land Stewardship Zone, where the rules might change so much that 18,000 acres originally set aside for development out there would turn into 43,000 acres.

It won't be rural for long, thank God.

And for the good news up in Lee County, The Bonita Bay Group wants a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to build thousands of homes and shops, plus new docks with almost 600 boat slips, on the north bank of the Caloosahatchee River.

It's been a while since you've heard about somebody just slapping down a vast new community, and squeezing hundreds of slips into a tortured river named in 2006 as one the 10 most polluted in the United States, hasn't it?

Here's what the Army Corp's 42-page public notice of the Bonita Bay plan, dated Nov. 6, says:

"These proposed docking facilities will provide a total of 570 boat slips (96 existing). The waters and submerged bottoms associated with the Caloosahatchee River and the mouths of Trout Creek and Owl Creek have been surveyed for sea-grasses and none found."

No sea grasses, isn't that good luck? They've all been killed off, conveniently, and now they'll never get a chance to grow again.

Ironically, the Army Corp's public notice came out within days of Lee County's decision to purchase the 1,726-acre Argo ranch that flanks the would-be development on the east side and presses up against the southern boundary of Babcock Ranch.

County officials proudly prophesied that the Argo land would be used to filter and clean water running off it into Telegraph Creek, and then into the poor old putrid "C-47" (C is short for canal), as the Army Corps calls the Caloosahatchee.

That's Florida Development Logic (FDL) at its contradictory best.

Here's why: You buy 1,726 acres for $24 million in taxpayer money, filter miles of water through it, and run the clean stuff into the river, hugely increasing the chance for sea grasses and fish to return from the dead.

In other words, you set up the conditions for a river miracle.

Then you let it flow downstream for about 300 feet. When it gets that far, you let 570 residents at Bonita Bay's new North River Communities throttle up their powerboats and yachts, dropping a few hundred gallons of oil into the clean water, and you go sip your single malt.

Never mind the deepening recession, caused by greed and excess on the part of bankers and developers. Never mind what we used to call, blithely, the environment. (I'm sick of hearing about that, aren't you?) Never mind the water, the infrastructure or the green space/wet space needs.

The economy is coming back, along with construction jobs, support jobs, service industry jobs, government service jobs and others, like Oh-Aren't-We-Wonderful jobs (in an up economy, PR cheerleading is a well-paid vocation).

But back in Collier, let me speak frankly about panther land, the 195,000-acre Rural Land Stewardship Zone where developers are planning some of the biggest turkeys of all.

How could 50 or 100 scrawny, smelly, flea-bitten, underfed 100-pound feline coon-eaters be so important that we can't boost the economy and build homes and shops and highways for people with money in their pockets and Florida on their minds?

A million of us now live in Collier and Lee. What about us, the humans, who want that second house and the third car and the much bigger boat?

Here's the thing: Soon again, if we don't surrender to maudlin sentimentality, money will be flowing through our hands like water. Just like it used to.

And speaking of water, we have enough of the darn stuff. With 65 inches of rain a year, it floods everything in sight, so why should we leave two-thirds of Collier County wet and wooded? And especially not for 50 or 100 doggone cats.

I'm talking turkey here.