Community Redevelopment Area

The Community Redevelopment Area

When the City of Port St. Lucie was designed and incorporated by its original developer as a bedroom and retirement community, little consideration was given to the land uses needed to serve a city of this size. As a result, there is no central core or traditional downtown and many residents work, shop and find entertainment outside of the City. This increases traffic, negatively impacts the City’s tax base, hinders the City’s ability to meet the service demands generated by growth, impedes the City’s ability to efficiently utilize its resources and detracts from the quality of life.

Although the City has made great strides in diversifying land uses over the years to address some of these issues and new planned communities have ameliorated conditions in the western part of the City, the problems in the eastern portion of the City have been pervasive, and it was decided that a comprehensive redevelopment effort was needed to achieve sufficient and long-lasting results.

Pursuant to Part III, Chapter 163, Florida Statutes, in January of 2001, the City conducted a study of the socioeconomic and development conditions in its US 1 corridor. This study, known as a “Finding of Necessity,” revealed conditions that are detrimental and impair sound growth management and constitute social and economic liability. Consequently, the City designated the study area as a Community Redevelopment Area (the “CRA”), created the City of Port St. Lucie Community Redevelopment Agency (the “Agency”) and established the Redevelopment Trust Fund (the “Fund”) in order to undertake community redevelopment activities pursuant to an adopted Community Redevelopment Plan (the “Plan”).

The City’s original CRA is approximately 1,700 acres or 2.7 square miles. The original CRA boundary includes the City’s US 1 corridor from just north of Village Green Drive, south to the St. Lucie/Martin County line. Lennard Road forms most of the eastern boundary, and the western boundary is predominantly the rear property line of those properties fronting US 1 (Federal Highway). Since the CRA’s creation in 2001, two additional areas have been formally designated as part of the CRA, Lentz Grove (now known as “East Lake Village”) and the Port St. Lucie Boulevard/Riverwalk District (the “CRA Expansion Area”). The CRA Expansion Area is illustrated in Figure 4, and the current CRA in its entirety is illustrated in Figure 5.