PORT ST. LUCIE — The battle for hospital supremacy on the Treasure Coast continues.

HCA Inc., which owns two hospitals in St. Lucie County, filed an appeal this week with the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee to stop Martin Memorial Health Systems from building a new hospital in Port St. Lucie’s Tradition community.

HCA exhausted its state appeals last month. (more…)

Detroit may have been rocked this year by the financial woes of American automakers, but evidence of the crisis can be found in almost every American city. In Fort Pierce, it’s seen in the empty lots where car dealerships once stood on U.S. 1.

Many franchise owners, even successful ones, were forced to close in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings for Chrsyler and General Motors earlier this year.

Now, with federal legislation passed this month, owners like Bill Wallace of Wallace Chrysler Jeep in Fort Pierce have recourse. (more…)

Support is growing for another of St. Lucie County’s “green” initiatives.

Four banks have committed a combined $20 million to establish a non-profit bank that would provide low-interest loans to homeowners and businesses looking to make environmentally friendly changes, such as installing solar panels. (more…)

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — The assistant principal who left Lincoln Park Academy after four months says he tendered his resignation after learning colleagues were circulating 2-year-old newspaper stories about his resigning under a cloud from Sarasota County schools.

Tim Romano says those stories were circulated on school computers and that he’s the person Principal Alan Cox referred to in a written warning to LPA staff that such computer use is prohibited.

“Information circulated (Nov. 17) about a staff member was unprofessional and lacked complete detail about the conclusion of the allegations from the past,” Cox wrote shortly after Romano resigned.

In the e-mail, obtained in a public records request by Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers, Cox continued: “I am disappointed in those who sent this information and your lack of judgment. I will take anyone breaking this policy to task the next time it happens.”

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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…)

Releases of polluted Lake Okeechobee water help fuel discharges like this one from the St. Lucie Lock into the river downstream. (2005 file photo, TCPalm)

After years of waiting, activists for the St. Lucie River will face off Friday with the federal government in a lawsuit in which they say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated their property rights by polluting the waterway with discharges from Lake Okeechobee.

The plaintiffs, whose suit is being paid for by the nonprofit Rivers Coalition Legal Defense Fund, are seeking $50 million in damages, the combined market value of their riverside properties.

“It’s an historic case that could have ramifications not just in Florida but across the nation,” said Karl Wickstrom, coordinator for the Rivers Coalition.

A hearing is scheduled at 1 p.m. in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington. A decision is not expected that day.

Martin County Commissioner Sarah Heard, Stuart City Commissioner Mike Mortell and Sewall’s Point Commissioner Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch plan to attend the hearing.

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Port St. Lucie Civic Center

Mayor Patricia Christensen called it the “beginning of a new era.”

Since its opening, though, the $25 million facility has had more success as a recreation center than as the economic anchor of a burgeoning “downtown” in a city built without one.

Its surrounding streets, with names such as Progress Lane and Main Street, are flanked by empty fields.

Its rental facilities have been used 180 times. Rental rates were cut in half late last month.

“The whole idea for this was to stimulate the development of a downtown and obviously the economy has had an effect on that,” said Chuck Proulx, the city’s parks and recreation director.
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TALLAHASSEE — Two safeguards on a secretive process that turns tax dollars into cash incentives for private corporations were quietly removed in the final days of the 2009 legislative session to help a Jupiter Island investment manager quickly secure $20 million for his digital animation company.

An amendment gave Gov. Charlie Crist’s office, which helped craft the language, sole authority to award $42 million in economic development money. As a result, nine companies, each identified only by a code name, were awarded shares of the money within a week this summer. One $7.4 million project in Taylor County was never discussed in public.

Nearly half of the summer’s total went to Project Bumblebee — a proposal from John Textor, who is targeting Port St. Lucie for a spinoff of Digital Domain, a visual effects company he owns with Hollywood blockbuster producer Michael Bay.

Textor has promised that the spinoff, Wyndcrest Holdings, will create 500 jobs by 2014, and the recession-ravaged city is considering a separate incentive package worth $10 million in cash, land in Tradition and additional stimulus money from the city and St. Lucie County for a building.

But while the city considers its offer, the last-minute state budget amendment has already benefited the election campaigns of Crist and state Reps. Kevin Ambler, R-Tampa, and David Rivera, R-Miami, whose support was critical for the amendment.

Just days after the legislative session in May, which ran into overtime as lawmakers squabbled over the budget, Textor gave $5,000 to the Republican Party of Florida’s federal campaign account to help Crist, who has raised more than $6 million for his U.S. Senate race next year.

In June, Textor gathered $2,000 in donations for Ambler and $1,500 for Rivera. Textor also helped arrange for former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino, one of Textor’s business partners, to attend Ambler’s kickoff fund-raiser last month for Ambler’s state Senate campaign. Textor said he hopes to host a fund-raiser for Ambler in Palm Beach County. (more…)

J.J. Taylor Companies, the second largest beer distributor in Florida, plans to start construction this week on a warehouse and beverage distribution center in Fort Pierce.

About 57 employees are working out of a temporary location in the city, said Jose E. Rivera, vice president of finance and administration for the company. Those employees will move to the new 25,000-square-foot center when it opens next year in the Crossroads Park of Commerce on Okeechobee Road, he said. (more…)