MARTIN COUNTY — County commissioners voted 4-1 on Jan. 6 to designate a contaminated property in Hobe Sound as a brownfield, a move that clears the way for a proposed 38-home luxury residential development to move forward under a state-backed environmental cleanup program.
The decision followed weeks of debate over whether the project, planned by Oasis Development LLC, met the requirements for Florida’s brownfield designation, a program administered by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection that provides incentives, including tax credits, to help developers remediate polluted land.
The developer first requested the designation in December, but commissioners raised questions about whether the project would generate enough jobs to qualify, the financial capacity of the development team and the background of one individual involved who has a prior fraud conviction…