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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
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.
PORT ST. LUCIE — An organization that wants to open a new charter school in Tradition is asking the School Board to delay considering its plans, a request that will push back the school’s projected opening date one year, to August 2010.
The request for a three-month delay is the second delay that Imagine Schools has requested in seeking local approval for the Imagine International Academy at Tradition. The first request was in December. (more…)
MARTIN COUNTY — Stuart resident Melissa Kinder tries to be professional at job interviews, but there has only been a few since her layoff almost a year ago from a local construction company office.
So in a recent interview, the 41-year-old woman really wanted to jump up and say, “For love of God I really need this job.” Her unemployment has run out. Food in the single woman’s refrigerator is from a friend. A Christmas gift card pays for gasoline.
And she didn’t get the job. “It’s difficult,” she said. (more…)
ST. LUCIE WEST — Martin Memorial Health Systems plans to open a freestanding emergency department this fall to provide medical care to western Port St. Lucie until it can build a full-service, 80-bed hospital in Tradition.
Martin Memorial and Port St. Lucie officials gathered Tuesday to celebrate the start of construction on the emergency center, which will be part of the health systems’ facility on St. Lucie West Boulevard. Expected to open by Sept. 1, the 12-bed center will be a full-service emergency department.
“It will provide critical services close to home rather than having people fight traffic when time matters most,” Martin Memorial Chief Executive Officer Mark Robitaille said.
Port St. Lucie’s growing population and sometimes gridlocked traffic were Martin Memorial’s main arguments for building a hospital in the city, which already is home to St. Lucie Medical Center, a for-profit hospital owned by Tennessee-based HCA Inc. (more…)
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