Office of Strategic Initiatives & Innovation
Port St. Lucie seeks federal Opportunity Zone designation for key corridors
The City nominated three east‐side census tracts for Opportunity Zone designation as part of the State of Florida’ s 2026 selection process.
Strategic Planning Workshop
On May 4-5, City Council held its annual Strategic Planning workshop, a two-day session dedicated to shaping the City’ s priorities for the upcoming year.
Facilitated by Alexis Baum and Tim Fife, the workshop provided Council members with an opportunity to review the status of ongoing projects, discuss emerging needs, and refine their long-term vision for the community.
This year’ s workshop also incorporated human-centered design techniques that City staff has adopted through training with the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. These techniques support the City team’ s efforts to better center the needs of residents as the Council prioritized focus areas based on the feedback of thousands of residents gathered through this year’ s National Community Survey and the Citizen Summit.
These nominations, which include areas along Port St. Lucie Boulevard, the U. S. 1 and Veterans Memorial Parkway corridor and the Walton & One mixed‐use redevelopment, reflect longstanding community priorities to revitalize aging commercial corridors, expand job opportunities and attract new private investment. Each tract presents indicators of economic distress, including slower commercial reinvestment, aging properties, elevated poverty levels and significant gaps between local and regional median family incomes.
To prepare competitive submissions, the Strategic Initiatives & Innovation team worked closely with the Florida Department of Commerce to clarify the nomination process, refine required documentation and ensure that each application demonstrated strong alignment with state and federal Opportunity Zone criteria and goals.
Port St. Lucie now will compete with other Florida communities for a limited number of Opportunity Zone nominations. If selected, Florida will formally advance the City’ s proposed census tracts to the U. S. Department of the Treasury, which will make the final designations by the end of 2026.
Securing Opportunity Zone status would help direct private capital to historically under‐invested areas, accelerate long‐planned revitalization efforts and support the community’ s vision for a more economically resilient east side. With strong public engagement, detailed planning and clear investment potential already in place, the City is well positioned as the state’ s review process moves forward.
The updated Strategic Plan is being drafted by the Strategic Initiatives & Innovation Team and will be brought forward for adoption at a City Council meeting in July. www. CityofPSL. com
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