Port St. Lucie begins City Center project

By Teresa Lane
Friday, November 10, 2006
PORT ST. LUCIE — Twelve exploding mortars and a simulated bomb jolted neighbors from their porches and sent a massive fireball skyward Thursday, but that's how officials wanted construction of the city's only downtown to begin.

With a bang.

After 20 years of clamoring for a central gathering spot, city officials think they've found it in the shadows of a nondescript shopping center that sits at the retail heart of Port St. Lucie on U.S. 1. As dozens watched the front wall of the former Village Green 6 Theatres crumble in the jaws of a track excavator Thursday, officials urged residents to keep their eyes on City Center over the next few years.

They might just think they're in a real city.

"We're going to see a new and beautiful downtown rise out of the dust," a beaming mayor-elect Patricia Christensen said. "What we'll see here in three to five years is something this community can be so proud of."

Indeed, with $85 million in taxpayers' money pledged and another $291 million in private investment, the transformation of the former Village Green Shopping Center into a CityPlace-like downtown will signal a new beginning for a town never designed to be more than a bedroom community, observers say.

"Everyone wants to feel like they're part of something," said councilman Jack Kelly, "and now people will have a place to belong."

As early as April, residents will see construction begin on the heart of the downtown: a 100,000-square-foot civic center in the northeast corner that will house everything from a gym and sprawling banquet rooms to a fitness center and the city's only public art gallery. The city also will begin work on two multistory parking garages and a large tiled plaza with interactive fountain that will have ample room for outdoor concerts and festivals.

Later in the year, Jupiter developer George de Guardiola and his partners, brother Eduard de Guardiola and Rendina Companies of Palm Beach Gardens, will begin work on three seven-story buildings that will house retail and residential units. The group also will start work on three stand-alone restaurants and two office buildings, all of which should open about the same time as the city's buildings in 2009.

Demolition of the former shopping center will last 18 months, largely because crews must await the February exodus of the Department of Motor Vehicles before razing the central part of the center. If it weren't for that, Community Redevelopment Agency Director Glenn Vann says, L.E.B. Demolition could rip through the aging walls of concrete and stucco in half that time, scraping up the massive parking lot and underground utility pipes as it goes.

While Beall's Department Store and Dollar General will remain open for years because of long-term lease agreements, all other buildings will vanish by mid-2008.

In their place will rise a Mediterranean-themed cluster of stores, offices, restaurants and homes, a close replica of West Palm Beach's CityPlace but situated on nearly twice the land. Pedestrians will stroll along tree-lined sidewalks just feet from slow-moving traffic, and cars will be tucked out of view in parking garages.

For Joe Holiday, president of the St. Lucie Professional Arts League, the promise of the city's first public art gallery means more than paintings and jazz performances.
It means the arrival of a true city.

"Art and music is the soul of any city," said Holiday, who longs to bring musicians and visiting artists to the 4,000-square-foot art gallery inside the civic center. "You need your stores and offices, but when you've got music and art, you feel a sense of completion."