PORT ST. LUCIE — The City Council Monday night unanimously agreed to move forward with purchasing 15 acres from Tradition Outlet LLC for $10 million, a move that puts up half the state’s contribution to help a Hollywood executive set up a digital production studio.

The studio could create up to 500 jobs and bring Florida State University’s Film Studies program to the Treasure Coast.

The package includes the local governments building a 150,000-square-foot studio for Hobe Sound-based Wyndcrest Holdings, a private investment firm focused on entertainment and Internet technology headed by Jupiter Island resident John Textor.
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MARTIN COUNTY — A $4 million federal grant announced Tuesday should mean restored oyster beds, cleaner water and about 100 jobs in Martin County.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has allocated $4,024,969 to the Martin County Commission. At their meeting Tuesday, commissioners are scheduled to award a contract to build about 200 acres of oyster bed reefs in the St. Lucie River between the Roosevelt and Evans Crary bridges and in the Northwest Fork of the Loxahatchee River near Tequesta.

The money for the project comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, part President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package. More than 800 applications for grants were made and 50 approved. Of the four projects funded in Florida, Martin County’s was the largest.

To qualify for the stimulus money, said Kathy FitzPatrick, a Martin County coastal engineer, the project had to be “shovel-ready.”

FitzPatrick said bids from contractors are expected Wednesday.

“If the commissioners award the bid on July 7,” she, “we’ll be out on July 7, 8 or 9 doing surveys on the St. Lucie and Loxahatchee rivers to see exactly where to put the oyster beds.”

Work could be completed in about a year.

FitzPatrick said “seven or eight” sites in the St. Lucie have already been permitted for beds. Patch reefs 30 feet in diameter and made of old oyster shells will be placed in the water near Martin Memorial Medical Center and Rio.

Closer to the Crary bridge, smaller reefs made of oyster shells in mesh bags will be placed in the water both as oyster habitat and to protect shorelines from erosion by boat wakes. Several landowners have signed on for mangrove plantings along their shorelines, FitzPatrick said.

County officials have identified 106 jobs that will be involved in the project, “everybody from marine contractors, barge operators, quarrymen for the huge amount of shells we’ll need, to nurserymen, scientists and ecologists,” FitzPatrick said. “There will be a lot of people employed by this over the course of the year, and almost all of them local.”

Oysters once thrived in the St. Lucie River, said Vincent Encomio, an oyster research specialist at the Stuart-based Florida Oceanographic Society.

“But over the years the St. Lucie has lost about 75 percent of its living oyster bed acreage,” Encomio said. “Creating more habitat for oysters will improve the habitat for all the other organisms that depend on the reefs to live.”

Oysters filter water at a rate of 40 gallons per oyster per day. With about 600,000 oysters per acre of reef, that’s 24 million gallons of water a day.

FitzPatrick said the bivalves will be able “to filter the entire volume of the river every month. That improvement to the water quality is very substantial.”

By Tyler Treadway

The White House is reviewing the merits of the proposed Indian Street Bridge as a response to a U.S. senator who included the span in his list of 100 questionable federal stimulus projects.

The review is being conducted only because it was raised by U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., not because it is a concern of the White House.

The review could be quickly wrapped up as the White House has already determined that one-third of the items highlighted by Coburn in a report released Tuesday are not stimulus projects or are misleading characterizations of stimulus projects.
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PORT ST. LUCIE — The city may get a little money from the federal government for the final piece of the Crosstown Parkway.

City Manager Don Cooper sent a letter to Congressman Tom Rooney earlier this month to request the Surface Transportation Authorization Bill of 2009 include the Crosstown Parkway Extension Project, which he wrote is a critical transportation project for the city.

Cooper asked for the bill to provide $5 million of the project’s estimated cost of $100 to $125 million, but he and the city won’t know if the bill includes the project until summer, according to Rooney officials.
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Still trying to figure out how last year’s federal stimulus bill might help your business? The Business Development Board of Martin County is hosting a pow-wow to clue you in.

The session, from 10 a.m. to noon Friday, is at the Realtor Association of Martin County’s headquarters in Stuart. RSVP by calling (772)221-1380.

TALLAHASSEE — The long-sought Indian Street Bridge, along with 16 other transportation projects expected to bring money and jobs to the Treasure Coast, got the green light from the state Joint Legislative Budget Commission Wednesday.

The 14-member commission comprised of Senate and House members agreed, without debate, to accept $3.8 billion in federal dollars that will pay for a cornucopia of projects targeting transportation, health and education.

Backers say the package will help the state recover from the worst recession in decades.
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ST. LUCIE COUNTY — State Road 70 east from the St. Lucie and Okeechobee county line could get a jump-start from $37 million worth of stimulus money.

The road-widening project for a 5- to 10-mile stretch east of the county line is one of four transit projects in St. Lucie County and 11 throughout the Treasure Coast placed before the Florida Legislative Budget Commission to review for federal stimulus money.

The road widening has been planned and designed but lacked the construction money to complete, St. Lucie Transportation Planning Organization Director Peter Buchwald said.

“Any project that’s been in the cycle for so long is a benefit,” Buchwald said. “I wish the TPO priority projects, which are Crosstown Parkway, Kings Highway, Indrio Road and Midway Road, would get funded as well.”

Another key project on the Treasure Coast is the $200 million-plus Indian Street Bridge between Stuart and Palm City.

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FORT PIERCE — A plan that includes eliminating 331 jobs and closing three schools to cut $30.6 million from next year’s budget was explained in detail Tuesday evening to elected members of the School Board, who sat silent through the presentation by Schools Superintendent Michael Lannon.

Their lack of comment was deliberate. Chairwoman Judi Miller said after the meeting all five members of the School Board had previously agreed in individual conversations with Lannon not to speak until after a town hall meeting on the proposal, scheduled for 6 p.m. March 31 at Fort Pierce Central High School auditorium.

Lannon spoke for almost one hour on a problem that he laid entirely at the feet of Tallahassee lawmakers who refuse to raise more money in the face of shortfalls created by the economic recession.
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Road projects on the Treasure Coast that have been stalled by the recession are about to get a jump-start with $6.8 million from the federal economic stimulus program.

St. Lucie will receive about $4.2 million, and Martin will get about $2.6 million.

That money doesn’t add up to much when it comes to road work, but officials in St. Lucie and Martin counties say the extra cash will allow construction to begin on some projects, creating hundreds of jobs.

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