Venice: What happened to paradise?

WHAT HAPPENED TO PARADISE!

Unique individual businesses are out; chain stores are in.
Natural Florida landscape is being destroyed and replaced by walled communities that are landscaped with non native plants. Retention ponds are everywhere with no aquatic plantings to attract birds and minimize erosion.

Charming flat roofed bungalows are being torn down on our Keys to be replaced by mega mansions that no longer offer any view of the gulf to those passing by.

Cows that once grazed in old fl pastureland now can only be found shrink wrapped in huge crowded grocery stores.

Orange groves like Nokomis Farms are becoming another PUD. Native ground cover that requires little water and no fertilizer is now replaced by St Augustine grass that attracts nothing but tax dollars and insects, while being very water and fertilizer needy.

Good Water quality at our pristine beaches is being replaced more frequently with swimming closures due to red tide, high nutrient levels, fecal matter content or sometimes flesh eating bacteria. Water birds that used to be seen everywhere are now rarely seen as their habitat is gobbled up in the shortsighted focus of generating additional tax revenue.

Whether we realize it or not over the last 8 years, the Venice people once loved barely exists any more except in photos and our memories.

Very sad that leaders fell for the revenue money trap that ultimately forever changes most once idyllic beach towns.   Please enact strong LDR’s to control the growth that takes place instead of letting builders do pretty much whatever they want.

Mike