Community Redevelopment Agency - Regular Meeting

Chair Martin? Here, ma'am. Mr. Bono?

Yes, ma'am.

Vice Chair Caraballo?

Here, ma'am.

Please stand for the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag

Additions and deletions to the agenda and approval of the agenda. Is there a motion?

Move approval of the agenda. Second.

I have a motion and a second.

All those in favor? Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. Approval of consent agenda. We have the 12/08/2025 meeting minutes. And we have our CRA annual report.

Motion to approve.

Second? The motion is second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Okay. The public to be heard. Would anyone like to address the CRA board? Seeing no one, no opposed, the public to be heard. Moving on to new business. 7A, project updates on community redevelopment areas.

Aye. Good evening. Good evening. Jennifer Davis for the record. I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for approving on the consent agenda, our annual report, which is required under Chapter 163 of Florida Statutes. That does get an update through 09/30/2025. So what Frank is going to provide you this evening is an update, really more comprehensive, things up to as recently as this week. So we'll get that to you. I also wanted to thank Frank Nott and Russ Blackburn because a lot of the work you're gonna see and hear about this evening is the work that they've been doing. So I will hand it off to Frank. Great.

Good evening, Frank.

Hi. How are all doing today?

Good. How are you?

Fantastic. So good evening, Chair, Vice Chair and Board members, Frank Nott, CRA. We're presenting on the it's basically about a year and a half of work that's been going on throughout all the CRA districts. So we're just going to provide some updates. And if you have any questions, you can interrupt. And if I can't answer, I have a good backup.

Sounds good.

So of course, we just go through this. This is our four CRA areas. We had our we passed the $2,000,000,000 value mark this year, this past year. Is through September 30. This is from last year. We're going to start with the revised original CRA over on the East Side. Again, here's the updated values. It started at $231,000,000 and we're up to $677,000,000 This again through September 30.

Existing conditions of Walton and one, really not a lot

there right now. We cleared all those two buildings, the Bell's Building and the old warehouse building. And what we are looking at now is our master plan that you guys approved in 2020, whatever it was, '3 or '4, I think. And so this is the site of the Tax Collector's Office that we just recently purchased, the hotel site which has RFP out, and the stadium site. So tax collector office, we closed out in December with an eighteen month lease back.

And so we've been space planning that building for which departments are going to go there and which areas of the building they occupy. The hotel site, RFP is out, 100 to 125 room hotel. I think the big takeaway here is we really like to see the roof activated in some port in some manner. The rest a rooftop restaurant, something on the rooftop. I think it closes in April 28, if I'm not mistaken.

It's when their proposals are due. Seventeen. Sorry. Missed it by a week. This is a stadium, summer endurance from the stadium.

We've been meeting with these folks, both the owners group biweekly and then on opposite weeks we meet with the infrastructure group or development team. They are ready to present their submit their site plan the May. They're getting real close. A lot of work has been going on, obviously, that we don't even see yet. But they have a preliminary building floor plan that the building department is reviewing right now.

Excuse me. They have discussed space for both the PD and the fire department to occupy some room there for whatever uses they have.

Nice.

So that's really good. The develop the the development team needs to reach out to the police department, get an operational plan. Probably would be somewhat in line with the fourth July or whatever events are going on there now. So it'll be very similar to that. Staff is working on the PUD amendment to make sure we have all the elements of what they're doing and what we need to do for the site.

It's gonna change get tweaked a little bit, but not too much it's not too drastic. Okay. I think that's what we have for that. Fielder Green Drive, we we presented this to you guys at the winter workshop where we talked about the peanut roundabout and the reverse angled parking. Appreciate your input on that.

We will be meeting with the Spanish Lakes resident, the community on sometime in April, late April to present that. And we need to figure out a public art feature out there which will help satisfy their needs for that community. The Huggins Slough, we have final design on this. The consultant has submitted for permitting. This is an unfunded project.

I think it's around $14,000,000 and currently it's unfunded. But we do have plans ready if we end up with a funding source. These are just some of the projects that have gone on in the original CRA area. So you're seeing some of these IHOP and Lactologic, which I always have a hard time pronouncing that. The county office is going to move over there. Murphy Gas has been come I don't Did you guys see Murphy Gas when they started? Keep they're building. They came in on, like, seven or eight tractor trailers, and it was up. It was amazing. But they're looks like they're getting close to finishing that. PSL Christian Academy went in over there behind the old

Mhmm.

And the hospital site as their their garage is finished, looks really nice, their garage. Mhmm. Other things we've noticed is McDonald's has brought in a submitted a site plan for the Sunny site, the old Sunny site. McDonald's has a site plan for that. The Rock the Spectrum has submitted a special use agreement special exception use agreement for the the old CVS at Village Green not Village Green, Veterans Memorial in US 1.

And we have a potential use for the old call center on the North that North Building and Town Center, which used to be the original Walmart. So we have a potential use for that, which is great. I like to fill up empty buildings.

Absolutely.

This is a project that we worked with Neighborhood Services. Actually, Neighborhood Services did it, but we were part of the selection committee. They had a fiftyfifty grant for, this is just one of the examples. There were several examples of landscape improvements, especially over in the Village Green area. So this is just some before and afters of they cleaned and painted this building and it looks really nice now.

And it's something that we can look forward to going on. We followed this program up since I think we're getting to have some money available for the CRA that we can improve buildings and facades and landscape improvements. As we go to East Lake Village, there's some improvements there from the original 02/9000 when it was first introduced. And then we're up to 146,000,000 in twenty three years. The voice is gone.

Really what's remaining on this is roughly about six I think there's six vacant residential lots now, that's all that's left. And then there's a one block that has two, a two four unit multifamily building available. And that's really all that's left in this whole area other than the commercial. There's been some opportunities for the commercial. We've seen some, but nothing's happened with that site yet.

As we go to Port St. Lucie Boulevard in the Port District, as you can see, we're up to almost $118,000,000 of property value there. This is one of the projects that's going on right now. You guys have probably seen the improvements on PSL Boulevard and down U. S. 1. Right now they're doing ADA improvements with the sidewalks, and they're also extending the left turn lane at U. S. 1, which would be greatly beneficial. It looks like the completion dates in September 2027.

This is a DOT project. And I think Ranger Construction's yeah, Ranger Construction's doing the project. So some of most of it's ADA, and then there'll be a milling and resurfacing. This is another empty building that got filled in with this was the old bank that is now a paints bank here at Center. Again, it's at least we're using existing buildings.

My favorite picture of this site is the overview of the Pioneer Park area. This project is you guys approved with the CDBG funding a new sidewalk there in front of the post office, which is a very needed connection. And then we have the Shero area, which is a shared bike lane on Rivergate Parkway. This project is funded through CDBG, and it's been priced out with Public Works has priced it out, they're ready to go to work. They're just waiting for the CDBG funds to be released.

Excuse me one second.

Speaking of the Port District, do we know when the contractor is breaking ground for the restaurant?

We're gonna get there in just one second.

Okay.

One second.

A lot of people asking.

I know. We we keep asking as well. Parking opportunities. We know parking is an issue out there. We're exploring these ideas of parking. There wasn't in the master plan some on street parking proposed. Just another opportunity. So we're exploring these different ideas. I think the big thing from this though at the end you'll see the word trolley. City manager, we've talked with some people and I think that's where the trolley is going to be to make these parking spots, parking lots viable would be some type of trolley either Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday or something along those lines.

But I think we gotta get into some kind of trolley service. Bridge Plaza, we purchased that. We just recently closed on it. We do have a conceptual plan for the parking, adding additional parking at Bridge Plaza and a more structured parking other than just parking on that grass out parcel right now. And we have a proposal in for design and parks is putting in for a fine grant.

Boardwalk is complete. These are just some of the connection points. The city owned areas are located in the indicated by the red dots. But if you guys have walked on it, I'm sure it's just a really beautiful walk. Russ did a great job getting the slow speeds in place. There's still a little bit of work to do. There's some conflicts with some existing signage that's out there. Mhmm. So he's working with the PD and also with Parks and Recreation and also the contractor. Get there's just a few conflicts that gotta get worked out with all with FWC blessings.

Do you know how long that will be? I know it's been a while now that

they've been trying to work that out. And I think they had to get brothers back in there to relocate one of the markers.

Okay.

And I think one of the signs on the bridge was too tall for the boat, for the PD boat, so they had to they're gonna have to get brothers in to do that as well. Okay. You guys enjoyed the ribbon cutting? Although, I will say miss Morgan had really tough time with those scissors. I don't know. I don't know. She's got good practice at the workshops, but Of course, here's the trail. Really nice. They did a great job. Zach's group did a great job on this.

We added some parking spaces. The Historic Society mentioned that people don't really understand how to park it there. So Genzak's group went out there and actually laid out some parking areas so people can understand where they're supposed to park and how they're supposed to park. Now here we go. So the permits need to be picked up.

We're meeting with the contractor tomorrow to better understand what their schedule is because we were told this past week that they were gonna have to have their mobilization in place and start and put the fence up, but we have not seen that yet. Right. So we will know more after tomorrow afternoon at 02:00, and we will be sure to present you guys a memo to you guys. Okay. Okay? And that's inside joke between Jennifer and I is like, did you go did you see the fist? She'll say, no. I said, yeah, I didn't either. So kind of an inside joke. But yeah, we've been obviously waiting for that to go up as well.

Some recent awards for the Pioneer Park in the Port District. It's just great to be recognized with some of these. Of course, the Great Places in Florida was a People's Choice Award, which was really great. Competed with a park down in Martin County, so it was nice to beat Martin County up. Definitely.

And this slide just amazes me still. This is through the end of the year, but look at the visits at the Pioneer Park. It's just amazing. And it just continues that draw. And you can see to the spike there on the chart at the right, on the bottom right there, that spike, and that's for holiday lights.

Yeah. It's amazing. Absolutely.

Excuse me, I have a question on this. What is the difference between visits and unique visitors?

So they're able to track and keep track of how many times you would go there for instance. If you've gone there multiple times, a unique visit would be if Jolene went there only one time, she would be a unique visitor. If you only went there one time, that's a unique visitor.

So do you add the two together?

No, no.

So the 224400 is part of the 670 Correct. Okay. Thanks.

Anchors? Do you guys like the anchors?

Yes, I think they're We

got some good positive feedback at the Citizens Summit. Bethany Grubbs in Planning and Zoning did a fantastic job with this. She was able to locate the manufacturer down in Pompano, so they're right here in our backyard for the most part. Unique Rabbit is the name of their company actually. So as we go forward and find other opportunities to place more, we will reach out to them and have some more made. This was a call to artists that actually painted these anchors. And we are very pleased with them. Hopefully you guys are because we really liked them.

Yeah. They came out great.

They really did. And I don't know if you've noticed the botanical gardens, but they've actually got some little solar lights on there, so it lights up at night. It's really nice. Now I'm gonna introduce Tricia Richter with Kimley Horn. You guys asked us to look into gateway features for the Port District, and she's actually done some renderings for you guys and some ideas. And I'm gonna Tricia's hopefully, he's on. Tricia?

Can you hear me, Frank?

Yes, ma'am. There you are.

Okay. Great. Apologies for not being there in person, but I I do appreciate the time. I'll walk you through some of the the signage as Frank just mentioned. We were brought on to help define the port district based on the the master plan.

And so, so far to date, what we've developed is a location map for the signage through some due diligence and site reconnaissance that we did, as well as working with staff, and then some preliminary signed families that we've put together. If you want to hit the next slide Frank, I'm not sure where to, okay, there you go. So those are the deliverables that we've developed so far. If you want to go to the location map, Frank.

Oh, you wanna go back and look?

Yep. Oh, sorry. Yeah. Thank you. So just defining the actual area is Lindgate Park to the North. To the south would be the Southern end of Pioneer Park. And then, of course, Port St. Lucie corridor defines east and west entrances. So they all kind of have a little bit different need coming from the south on Westmoreland. We have available vehicular medians that we would suggest in locating a vehicular monument sign in.

This is kind of reminiscent of what you would typically see at the entrance to like a subdivision, that kind of scale. At Lyngate Park, we have a little bit more room to work with. So at the pedestrian access there, we have a little bit slightly different treatment for the entry as you come south past Lyngate Park. And then of course on St. Lucie Boulevard, it's an FDOT right of way, so coordinating requirements with FDOT, but also providing something that's showy for vehicular traffic that's moving at a higher rate of speed.

So we have three different types of signs based on the three different needs along the limits of the district. And then if you want to go to the next slide Frank, I'll kind of dive into what those are. Yeah, so the first family here, it takes elements that you've seen at Pioneer Park within the district. So it's that staggered timber that's used for the the welcome to Pioneer Park, for instance, taking the natural elements from court and steel using a contrasted pin mounted lettering on front of the sign with a concrete base for the vehicular monument in the median. So you can kind of see the different scale of the different signs, they all relate back to each other using those natural elements.

Again, that is already reminiscent throughout the district. The next two are kind of iterations or building on top of that just to provide a little bit more, in this case, little bit more whimsy, taking the still the same similar elements of the timber, the cordon, and the stacked stone, and introducing some color, a little bit more fun with the wave and the shape of, a sail. This provides an opportunity to actually, like, laser cut the cordon steel, which I think can play with a little bit of the difficulty in how you're going to read some of the signs, so some of the messaging may be simplified. For instance, just the anchor to define the vehicular gateway with this particular concept. And then the last and final one is a little bit more, I would say, sophisticated where it's taking again the same elements of the timber, the cut stone, and build building them together to create

a little bit

more sleek look, still some texture though with the timber, introducing color in this particular concept with the pin mounted lettering. And then this one also provides an idea of at the pedestrian monument sign, particularly up at Lyngate Park or the pedestrian access to the preserve at Pioneer Park, introducing a seat wall. So users can either gather or meet or, begin their trek in the Port District at those locations. So that's what we have to date that we've submitted to staff and definitely excited to get this one moving forward and hearing any, you know, feedback from you all.

K. Thank you. Feedback council? Yes? Are

we deciding on this tonight?

Just some comments of what you like, what you don't like. There might be a mixture that you like.

They're all very nice. I like the third one because it's sleeker and cleaner and sophisticated. She threw that in there, I didn't. And I like the fact of the seating that they could sit at. And it just I don't know. It looks twenty first century looking, or we should say twenty second coming up. But two or three.

So Pickett, what do you like?

I actually like three, but keeping in the concept of what's going on at Pioneer Park, the top one on the top right hand, I think

would be more in line with we already have there. So if I had to vote right now, I think I'd go with the top right one.

Councilwoman Bana?

I like two.

Vice mayor. Bookings for life, I like three. I think three is probably the nicer of all of them to me. But I do want to just comment, I think it's really important that when we do decide on a final, that how are we going to collaborate with the front entrance, because we have the digital sign there. I just pulled it up.

I wanted to see it. I pulled it up on Google Earth because I knew it had cobblestone, but I couldn't remember the color. It's right now gray cobblestone, and the most important part about branding and how we're going to brand this is going to be to make sure that it's seamless in the brand. And I just want to make sure that we're thinking about that as we're selecting. Because none of these would actually, in my opinion, collaborate. If anything, they would clash. So just food for thought. Thank you.

Alright. So I like two the best. I do like three, but I do like two the best. But if we could do if we if we decided to go with three, could the sign look more like the first vehicular wait a minute. The first one, this the shorter sign, the first one you see could look like the little sail. I think that would be cool if you can make it because that it totally fits with with the area. But either one. But I like two the best.

There's three options, there's five U, and there's tie. I don't know how we did that. So

let's do it, make it very easy. So One's out. One's out, and Dave was the only one to pick one. So Dave, now you pick out of two or three.

I go with three.

Okay. There you have

it. Okay.

And just as a follow-up, we can look into the skin reskinning the entrance sign as we look, you know, for implementing this across the district. So we'll look into what that cost would be to reskin that.

And Madam Mayor, know that you were liking the way that the sale was, but I would like us to provide examples of three the way that it's slotted. I think it's actually a cool feature, it's just different. When you pull in, it's impactful, but it's hard to see it on a picture. So out of fairness, I don't know if two looks better than three, so it'd be interesting if you have any real world examples of the two with the sail and the three slatted.

Okay. We'll bring back something for you guys to look at again.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Alright.

Thanks, Tricia. Appreciate it.

Yeah. No problem. Thank you all.

As we go into the Southern Grove, this, of course, had our biggest increases. Of course, we go from raw land to a lot of development out there. Mhmm. And we expect that to grow even further because it was still under a lot of area under development. Mhmm. The red box in the middle is pretty phenomenal. Right? We're down to 20 acres, basically, is all we have left of property out there. It's it's just amazing. Jennifer and Margaret have been tremendous on getting these things done.

They spent a lot of time negotiating with these developers and property owners. These are some of the recent sales. Amadine, they have submitted their site plan. They do will have a minor PUD amendment for PSL is construction plan ready. Saint Matilda is in the same boat.

Traditional entertainment district, both of those, they how why we have not seen anything from them. They do have some preliminary site plans on their website, but we have not seen anything in our files yet. They did submit a preliminary not a preliminary. It's a pre application meeting for the five acre site that they have up there by the Burger King.

Okay.

So they did submit a pre app for that.

Okay.

Recent PSAs, we just went through this March 9, the COSCO on the left and the Tamboni on the right, COSCO conceptual site plan. And the Tamboni site, actually, they submitted their site plan. I think it's on for site plan review.

And

these are the remaining parcels. The two on the left are the remnants of the Costco sale, and the one on the right really resulted in the realignment of Sanzone and Mackie with the Costco

purchase.

Okay.

These are some of the things that are going on in Southern Grove. We have to remember that Southern Grove goes all the way over to the community. So these are just some of the things that are also going on out in the Southern Grove. We also have seen site plans for our Chili's, Chipotle, Wendy's, Tesla. There's two gas stations. Over there by Lowe's, there's one. So there's a there's a lot of things going on out there in the in the all of Southern Grove.

It would be nice if we can get an update from Loomer Real Estate. It's been a while. So the extent we could reach out and ask because our residents are asking

Mhmm.

That would be wonderful.

Southern Grove Jobs, I think we this was presented at our last GFC meeting as well. The number of square feet, capital investment, and I think jobs is here of these projects on the left. Of course we have some others that are going to be happening. So it's just going to grow, that number is going to grow. It's really, really impressive. This is a video that Ben and I were just talking about that. He shot this in November for the city manager's presentation at the EDC meeting, and it is so outdated.

It is.

We just we just walked Costco. Well, they wouldn't even walk. We drove Costco this morning. Mhmm. Those buildings are done. All that is a sea of concrete out there for their parking. It's amazing. Yeah. It's just incredible how much progress has been made with this site in just four or five months. This is Marshall Parkway. We're coming up on here. The Costco wholesale would have been there on the left. This right in the center of the screen now is the 10 acre site. Then we'll be coming off on 4 PSL and Saint Matilda. And in the background, you'll see is import max coming out of the ground.

We added this slide because I think we always like to see this as how much money we've gotten in grants. And it's nearly half of these projects, the road projects in Southern Growth Infrastructure, nearly half has been paid by grants. Think that's all we have. So if we have any questions, we'd be happy to answer.

Any questions?

We'll get that information. That's okay. Go ahead.

Madam Mayor, I see Rabbi in the audience. I don't know he raised some concerns at one of the last meetings. Do we have an update for him?

So we have compiled the sites that are gonna be available within Southern Grove and then looking at what that looks like going out into the market, do we put it out as an RFP to see what might come in for sites that we have versus dealing with LOIs. I've received several LOIs in the past week on various properties, and we're not acting on any of those this time because we are waiting on those road projects to be complete so that we can ensure when we enter contracts with developers that we're able to meet our obligations in those contracts. We'll be reaching out to the rabbi on what the options are just like we will with all the other developers. Okay.

All right.

Yes. I have a question too. With the entertainment districts, because it's been a while since I looked at the master plan for Southern Grove, did we as far as the different uses, entertainment district is the definition. So I would assume as a resident there's going to be entertainment there. How do we ensure that it doesn't become another commercial plaza and will have an entertainment component? Was that specified in the master plan, or is it kind of just multiple uses that could go there?

So the master plan identifies those entertainment nodes within Southern Grove. The individual agreements with the developers allow for certain uses up to a certain point. So that's kind of where you capture what those uses could be, you know, up to 250,000 square feet of retail, 140 hotel rooms, things like that. Those are the entitlements that are transferred in the agreement. And then we work with the developers on providing feedback.

I know there have been provisions in some of the PUD's to allow for additional height restrictions. For example, if there was a Topgolf or some sort of entertainment use like that that requires very large poles, we made sure that those were included so that they could be achieved if that use wanted to come to the site.

Yeah, that's good. I'm glad. Thank you for bringing that up because I wasn't sure, since I don't have the master plan in front of me, how detailed we were in it. And it sounds like we were, which is good because my concern is obviously is if these sites don't develop for

a number

of years for whatever reason. And that's why I think an update like the mayor said is important. I want to make sure that we preserve those entertainment components because we have plenty of housing, still not enough commercial, but definitely no entertainment, and I know how that's important to the residents in the city.

And we were provided some feedback that there was a lot of announcements that were going to be hinged upon the Costco announcement. So now that that's been made, we're hopeful that we're going to see a lot more forward progress on those sites. But we will get you an update, whether it's a bringing Gustavo's team in to give you an update or we can get one and provide it for a VMMO.

We'll get

that to you.

Great. I appreciate that. So that was my understanding too that once Costco was announced then other things would be starting to happen.

Can I add one more thing? I forgot this. You'll appreciate this. Mackie Marshall, the backbone power for the roadway, which would service the lift station and the irrigation station, We were told that they we would have power on May 8 or by May 8. We are powered up already today.

Great.

So it's fantastic. FPL did a great job. Our CEI really stayed on their back, FPL came through, it's tremendous.

Awesome. Good to know. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Thank you very much. Other issues by Board members? No. All right. We're adjourned.