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Credit: City of Port St. Lucie.
The City of Port St. Lucie (PSL) has a rather unique origin story—and, despite its name, there isn’t a port within the city. “Unlike many South Florida cities, we weren’t founded along Henry Flagler’s railroad in the 1900s, which brought progress and new populations,” describes the city’s website.
The city wasn’t built around a historic downtown or centers of commerce near those train stops. Instead, PSL was incorporated in 1961 by a development group with the goal of selling quarter-acre lots to retirees.
That means the city expanded for decades without job centers, commercial areas, or enough parks to support a multigenerational community, and without sidewalks, streetlights, water lines, or sewer service. “For many years, about 70,000 residents traveled outside the city each day for work, making job creation one of the community’s top priorities,” explains Sarah Prohaska, the City’s director of communications.
The city made two decisions.
One was taking over a 1,200-acre development and transforming it into what locals call the Southern Grove Job Corridor, and the other was letting residents decide what to protect through a new conservation program.
The jobs corridor is now nearly complete, years ahead of schedule, and the conservation program even helped PSL win the impressive 2025 All-America City Award.
How the City Became Its Own Developer
In 2018, Tradition Land Company, the original developer of the 1,200-acre Southern Grove tract along Interstate 95, exited the community and offered to transfer the property to the city. To prevent the land from falling into foreclosure, city leaders assumed the role of master developer.
“The land was essentially transferred to us because the developer was having difficulty selling the individual parcels,” says Ms. Prohaska. “The city took on the assessments but not the taxes, which made it easier for us to assemble the parcels and sell them at market value.”
Working with the Urban Land Institute, the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, and community stakeholders, the city developed a long-term master plan to attract employers in manufacturing, logistics, research, and healthcare.
“The experts told us it would take 30 years to sell the land and turn the vision into reality,” Ms. Prohaska says. But the city didn’t wait three decades. After COVID-19, people began moving to the area, the region needed jobs, and businesses found a ready workforce to fill them.
“The bulk of the work was completed within five years, rather than the 30-year timeline we were given,” says Kate Parmelee, the city’s deputy city manager for strategic initiatives and innovation. By 2025, less than 20 acres remained available for purchase.
State and federal partners helped fund much of the infrastructure that made this growth possible. Florida awarded Port St. Lucie a $3 million Florida Job Growth Grant in 2018 for a roadway within the corridor, followed by an additional $3.5 million from the same fund in August 2021 for further infrastructure.
The American Rescue Plan Act contributed $5,530,315.50 toward Phase IV of the Tom Mackie Boulevard and Marshall Parkway infrastructure improvements, including water, sewer, and stormwater systems.
Credit: City of Port St. Lucie.
Who Moved Into the Corridor
According to Ms. Prohaska, employers soon followed:
City Electric Supply (TAMCO division): 411,000-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility, $38 million investment, 200 retained jobs and 50 new jobs.
Sansone Group’s Legacy Park, anchored by FedEx: 245,000-square-foot regional sortation center, $44 million investment, 450 jobs. At full build-out, the city expects Legacy Park to include more than 5 million square feet of space and employ more than 3,000 people, though that figure depends on construction, which is still underway.
Amazon: 220,000-square-foot delivery station, 200 full-time jobs.
Cheney Brothers: $55 million food distribution center adding hundreds of jobs, with wages the city says run 35% above the county average.
Accel International Holdings: wire and cable manufacturing facility on a 10-acre site, 125 positions.
OCULUS Surgical: relocated 10-acre headquarters, 50 high-wage jobs.
Costco: acquired a 192-acre parcel in 2024 and began construction on a 1.8 million-square-foot distribution center expected to bring 500 jobs once complete, though that figure also depends on the project still being underway. A retail store has also begun construction and is expected to open in 2027.
The corridor also attracted the medical investment that city leaders had targeted from the start.
Cleveland Clinic: built its seven-story Tradition Hospital, its only research institute outside the city of Cleveland, and, in 2020, opened the Florida Research and Innovation Center, a 107,000-square-foot facility with biosafety level 3 lab space; the facility’s scientific programs target health challenges including cancer and emerging pathogens.
Florida International University: Center for Translational Science, adding more than 50 jobs.
Naturally PSL: A Council Priority Set by Residents
As Port St. Lucie grew, the city increasingly embraced environmental stewardship as an important part of its future. The city is in a region anchored by the St. Lucie River and the Indian River Lagoon, one of the most biodiverse estuaries in North America.
At the 2023 Citizen Summit, an annual event where residents help determine the city’s strategic priorities, locals identified access to neighborhood parks, green spaces, and preserves as their top concern. This led to Naturally PSL: Green Spaces and Places, a resident-driven initiative to protect and expand the city’s natural areas.
An important proof point came at Rosser Lakes Preserve, which was a property once planned for more than 100 homes. “Through the Naturally PSL initiative, we interviewed more than 1,000 residents and generated 1,000 ideas over the course of a year through our innovation team,” says Ms. Parmelee.
“The City Council felt it had a strong sense of what residents wanted. When the opportunity arose to purchase the property, prevent development, and turn it into a nature preserve, the council decided that was the priority.”
That decision led to the launch of the Naturally PSL Community Trust, a new city land bank funded to continue acquiring green space as it becomes available.
With residents and partners, the city has worked to protect 744 acres of conservation and recreational land and to expand and activate 41 miles of trails. In 2025, the National Civic League named PSL one of 10 All-America City Award winners, recognized for its environmental leadership through community engagement.
What mattered most to Ms. Parmelee about the award was what the judges saw in it, and what it ultimately illustrated. “I was struck by the idea that we’re setting a new standard for how midsize cities can grow and evolve,” she says.
“Port St. Lucie was known for a long time as an example of sprawl, essentially how not to grow as a city. We had to retrofit the city to provide the things people expect from a successful community, including jobs and public amenities.” The Citizen Summit model itself has since been replicated elsewhere, including in Columbia, Missouri. “We’re not competitors; we’re collaborators in city government, so we shared the model openly,” Ms. Parmelee says.
The city has also reduced its property tax rate for 10 consecutive years.
With that chapter nearly finished, the city’s already shaping its next strategic plan, a process that will be paused until a new council is seated in November to help set priorities. “It’s part of our onboarding process: determining how we work together, how we generate ideas, and how we keep resident feedback at the center,” Ms. Parmelee says.
