FORT PIERCE - A charter school company has withdrawn its application to open a school in the Tradition community of Port St. Lucie.

“In these very tenuous economic times we feel that it be best that we withdraw the application,” Rod Sasse, director of Imagine Schools, wrote in a letter to the St. Lucie County School Board.

Imagine International Academy at Tradition, as the school was tentatively called, would have enrolled kindergarten to eighth grade students. It also would have drawn much of its student population from the children of employees at a biotechnology research park, the Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition.

Charter schools are paid for with public money, but run privately.

Imagine still plans to open The Nau School for kindergarten through eighth grade students in southwestern Port St. Lucie near Becker Road, school officials said. The charter school has about 325 students enrolled so far, said Kathy McGinn, the district’s assistant superintendent for strategic planning and central services. It is slated to open next year.

The Nau School asked last year for an extended deadline for students to enroll after construction was delayed and several temporary locations fell through. The school, which had 700 students pre-registered last year, didn’t open as planned.

Imagine can submit another application to open the Tradition school, officials said, but the process would start over. (more…)

Core Communities LLC, the company behind the Tradition community and Port St. Lucie’s biggest developer, is trying to renegotiate two major loans as the value of its property has dropped.

Core’s parent company, Fort Lauderdale-based Woodbridge Holdings Corp. (Pink Sheets: WDGH), warned in its first-quarter report last week that Core was dealing with “cash flow deficits” and said its lenders are seeking payments to more closely align two development loans with the depleted value of Core’s land.

The deterioration of the real estate market and the possibility of those cash payments “raise substantial doubt regarding Core’s ability to continue as a going concern,” Woodbridge states in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. And Woodbridge points out that it’s under no obligation to inject cash into Core. (more…)

Port St. Lucie’s next biotech institute is one step closer to reality.

Oregon Health & Science University’s Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute signed a deal this month to design and build its new $30 million laboratory in the Tradition development west of Interstate 95.

The institute tapped Baltimore-based Whiting Turner Contracting Co. to oversee construction of the 105,000 square feet of laboratories and offices. The building is on target to be completed in May 2011, said Andrew Favata, vice president for Tradition’s developer, Core Communities LLC.

VGTI Florida, as the local campus has been dubbed, will be built on eight acres at Core Communities’ Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition, a fledgling research park that’s now home to another biotech outfit, the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies. (more…)

Job hunters in St. Lucie County have stiff competition. The unemployment rate spiked to 12.8 percent in March — almost double the rate a year ago.

To help residents beef up their resumes and interview skills, a job seminar is scheduled for 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

April 29 at Tradition Town Hall. The event will be hosted by U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta.

You don’t have to win Home & Garden Television’s green home in Port St. Lucie to get an up-close look at the hydroponic garden and solar-power system.

The house, at the Tradition development, will be open for public tours April 20-June 6. Tickets are $15.

The domestic cable network built the 2,430-square-foot home for its second annual green home giveaway contest.

It’s one of a handful in Florida that has received platinum-level certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program.

PORT ST. LUCIE — Ripe strawberries are dangling in the yard at the lone house on Westcliffe Lane. Tomatoes, onions and corn are sprouting, too.

The porch of the Home & Garden Television's Green Home in Tradition.

No green thumb is necessary: A solar-powered pump shuttles water from two nearby rain barrels to the hydroponic garden. To find out if the rain will fill the barrels today, step inside the house, where a flat-screen monitor greets you with the forecast.

No showers predicted? That’s OK. Sunshine powers rooftop solar panels. The monitor shows how much energy they’re generating, too.

“It doesn’t provide all the electricity, but it sure helps,” the home’s architect, Michael Carlson, said of the 2-kilowatt system.

This is Home & Garden Television’s Green Home, the network’s second ever and first in Florida. It’s a $750,000 collection of eco-friendly must-haves and green novelties that HGTV will give away in a drawing in June. (more…)

FORT PIERCE – The fifth anniversary of Zora Fest this year, “Zora Fest! Dust Tracks in Florida,” features some new ventures in recognizing the literary achievements of the late author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.

The festival kicks off on Tuesday with a “Rent” party and re-dedication of the Hurston grave site at the Garden of Heavenly Rest Cemetery at 17th Street and Avenue S in Fort Pierce. The event is at 3 p.m. and is free and open to the public. In the tradition of the Harlem Renaissance, guests are asked to bring food to this party.

On Thursday, Women with Words will provide its annual book review at 5 p.m. at the Sunrise Theatre. The topic of the book review is “I Love Myself When I Am Laughing, Zora Neale Hurston Reader” edited by noted The Color Purple author Alice Walker. There is no fee for this event.

Zora Neale Hurston's grave site in Fort Pierce

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ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Tourism leaders from Grand Bahama Island will meet with local officials this week and get a first-hand feel for St. Lucie County in an effort to build a business and tourism partnership.

Grand Bahamian and St. Lucie County officials hope the visit, which will include tours of Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie, will help solidify a non-binding agreement the two groups entered into in December with the goal of boosting tourism in both locations. One of the main ideas behind the agreement is to work together to market both areas, such as offering vacation packages between the two locations. (more…)

A few years ago, the well of state incentives for new businesses was deep.

Port St. Lucie got a big bucketful: $32 million to lure the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies and $60 million for a local branch of Oregon’s Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute.

But the supply has since been drained by budget cuts and a constricting economy. So Port St. Lucie is drilling for new sources of cash - and it’s not looking in the usual places.

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