PORT ST. LUCIE — The City Council voted 4-1 at its Monday night meeting to move forward with making Midway Road the dividing line between the city and Fort Pierce.

But officials have just begun ironing out the details regarding utilities and annexations in the joint planning agreement.

The council agreed to assign Midway Road from the Indian River Lagoon to the St. Lucie County Fairgrounds as the boundary. Councilwoman Michelle Berger had requested at the council’s Oct. 19 meeting a follow-up discussion about the joint planning agreement for services north of Midway Road.

“I’m quite comfortable putting a line at Midway Road,” Berger said.

The council had met with the Fort Pierce City Commission, the St. Lucie County Commission and the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority Board on Oct. 16 for a joint meeting. They decided to put together a joint planning agreement within six months.

The cities made unofficial agreements in the 1990s that Port St. Lucie wouldn’t grow north of Midway Road and Fort Pierce wouldn’t grow south of it.

But Vice Mayor Jack Kelly reiterated he doesn’t want to tie up the hands of the city’s utilities by setting the boundary now for the future. He agreed about a line for annexations and said the agreement would be the way to discuss utilities.

Mayor Patricia Christensen questioned whether the city would be able to service the size of the city in 50 plus years from now.

“We will probably be serving customers west of us,” she said. “We have to start thinking about how we’re going to serve our customers, our residents.”

No matter what the final terms are in the agreement, Christensen said any development that happens on the border would have impacts on both cities. She said she was concerned about utilities too.

“We haven’t even completely developed as a city,” Christensen said. “How much can our utility truly handle?”

As the only dissenting vote, Councilman Christopher Cooper said he was concerned about what the gateway to the city would look like. Cooper said he would rather have a project come into the city so it can control the look.

Still, Berger said the city’s vision should be west instead of north. She said the city has commercial pieces of land available now for development at Becker Road and in Tradition.

“If the jobs happen north of Midway,” she said, “it’s still good for our people.”

Discussion began earlier this year when a developer, Jupiter-based Devcon Development, asked the city to annex 773 acres at the northwest corner of Midway Road and Interstate 95 referred to as the Willow Lakes/Red River Annexation, previously called the Provences Annexation.

The developer first applied to St. Lucie County in 2005. Officials have said the application was shopped around to the different local government entities.

By Laurie K. Blandford

Tags: divide, Fort Pierce, Indian River Lagoon, midway road, Port St. Lucie, st. lucie county fairgrounds, utilities

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