PORT ST. LUCIE — In years of legal battles, Martin Memorial Health Systems has jumped every hurdle standing in the way of its plan to build an 80-bed hospital in Tradition.

This month, it cleared a critical one.

Hospital officials announced today that the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration accepted the recommendation of an administrative law judge to allow the $100 million project to move forward over the objections of HCA Inc., which owns St. Lucie County’s two existing hospitals.

“We feel that this is really a major step,” said Mark Robitaille, Martin Memorial’s president and chief executive officer.

HCA, which has run out of options with the state, now will have to pursue its case through the court system. HCA officials said today that they were disappointed with the decision, but hadn’t decided whether to appeal.

An appeal could take at least a year to resolve. (more…)

Just call it another economic carrot.

A couple weeks after the Port St. Lucie City Council lured a major motion picture and video game animation studio to the Treasure Coast with $51.8 million in economic incentives, St. Lucie County announced that it had done the same with a company that makes medical products.

This time, the carrot is a tad smaller.

County commissioners, using the secretive title “Project Can Do,” approved a package in August that allows Health-Chem Diagnostics LLC, of Pompano Beach, not to pay property taxes or rent for 10 years — a value of about $2.3 million — in exchange for opening a $27 million facility in Fort Pierce. The site will employ about 160 people, with an average annual salary of $60,000, during the next five years. (more…)

STUART — Martin County Library Director Donna Tunsoy, who helped lead a major expansion of the county’s library system, is among 23 county employees who are leaving under the latest buyout program.

Tunsoy, who was promoted to library director in November 1998, oversaw the opening of the Blake Library in Stuart, the Hobe Sound Library, the Hoke Library in Jensen Beach and the Morgade Library in Port Salerno. Tunsoy took over the $14 million expansion program from the county’s prior library director, Gretchen Cuffe.

“She completed the work that her predecessor started with creating a branch system of libraries that I would say is the envy of other communities our size,” said Suzanne Horstman, the executive director of the Library Foundation of Martin County.
(more…)

With a $51.8 million deal, the city council on Monday added a major motion picture and video game animation studio to the growing list of companies lured to the Treasure Coast with millions in local, state and federal incentives.

Council members unanimously approved the grant for Wyndcrest DD of Florida, a parent company of Digital Domain, the Academy Award-winning firm behind animation for movies such as Titanic, Apollo 13 and Transformers.

According to the grant agreement, the project will be funded mostly with privately backed bond money through joint efforts with St. Lucie County. About $20 million will come from developers — $10 million from two developers that had been earmarked for another project and $10 million from a land swap between the city and one of the Tradition developers.

In exchange, the company will have to create up to 500 jobs with an average annual salary of nearly $65,000 by 2014. Through a 20-year lease agreement, the company is expected to reimburse the city for all but the $10 million received from the developers.

Wyndcrest owner and CEO John Textor told council members during a presentation Monday that the company already had hired 15 people for the new studio, including two from Port St. lucie and several more from the Treasure Coast.

(more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — The bill to attract a movie special effects studio is finally in, and it’s a potential blockbuster.

The city has put together a proposed $51.8 million deal, in addition to a $20 million state incentive package, to build a movie and video game animation and military simulation studio on 15 acres within Tradition.

City Manager Don Cooper said Thursday the agreement requires Wyndcrest DD Florida Inc. to reimburse the city for the entire financing, except for a $10 million cash grant from developers, through a 20-year annual lease. (more…)

VERO BEACH — Minor League Baseball officials hope their plans for the former Dodgertown will bring year-round business to local hotels, restaurants, stores and health clubs.

Craig Callan, the vice president of MiLB Vero Beach, updated the Taxpayers’ Association of Indian River County at its monthly membership meeting Wednesday on the future of the former spring training home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. (more…)

INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Federal regulators’ concern with sea-turtle nesting prompted county commissioners Tuesday to stretch a $7.3 million North Beach-restoration job over two years.

“They don’t have a high level of confidence in the (inland sand) material the county is proposing,” county Coastal Resources Manager Jonathan Gorham told commissioners. (more…)

STUART — An online neighborhood Web site is including the city of Stuart in its top 20 list of best places to retire.

NeighborhoodScout.com ranked the city No. 18 in the nation on a list of 20 cities where people can retire for less than $150,000.

The rankings were posted on the popular Web search engine AOL.com.

Corpus Christi, Texas is No. 1 on the list.
(more…)

VERO BEACH — A high-level financial struggle over the troubled Vero Fashion Outlets now may reach into an owner’s family trust, court records show.

In early October the outdoor mall filed for bankruptcy in federal court, a move that halted a foreclosure lawsuit filed by the mall’s creditor, LNV Corp. of Nevada, in Indian River Circuit Court. LNV Corp.’s attorney Kenneth Curtin contends the mall defaulted on a $32 million loan for purchase of the 329,000-square-foot mall in 2007. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — The owners of a new antique mall expect to open Hidden Treasures of the Treasure Coast in a few weeks on U.S. 1. (more…)