Since her employer began closing on Fridays, Dawn Gilmore has turned her photography hobby into a money-making business that is helping to offset her lost income.

Without a lot of new real estate development, business has been slow for the Houston Cuozzo Group, a landscape design firm in Stuart. After laying off one-third of the staff of 18 last year, the firm started closing on alternate Fridays last September as a way to reduce workers’ hours and cut costs. In March, the firm started closing every Friday.

Across the Treasure Coast, many residents who have avoided layoffs are facing reduced hours — which means less money in their wallets. Some are spending their new-found spare time with family, home improvement projects or hobbies. Others are looking for ways to make up the lost income, such as a side business or a second job.
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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…)

A local contractor is making plans to build an eco-friendly office building atop a former dump in Stuart.

Ocean Gate General Contractors is finalizing negotiations to lease about 3 acres of the old city landfill property on Monterey Road, the site of the out-of-business Monterey Pointe Golf and Practice Center.

The Stuart-based company hopes to build a 20,000-square-foot, gold-rated LEED building at the site, incorporating energy-saving features to earn the designation from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, company President Mark MacDonald said. (more…)