Southern Grove Jobs Corridor, Port St. Lucie

Southern Grove is a 3,605-acre district along I-95 in the Tradition area that the Port St. Lucie Community Redevelopment Agency describes as the city's answer to decades of out-commuting and limited local job opportunities (City of Port St. Lucie, Southern Grove page).

The city's account of the problem is specific: Port St. Lucie began without a traditional downtown or employment hub, and at one point nearly 70,000 residents commuted out of the city daily (Southern Grove page). The same page calls the response the Southern Grove Jobs Corridor, a 1,200-acre tract along I-95, while its history section puts the jobs corridor or employment center designation at 1,321 acres, citing an Urban Land Institute report from as early as 2004; both acreages appear on the city page and are reported here as written (Southern Grove page).

The Southern Grove Community Redevelopment Area was established in 2012, and the district falls within the Southwest Annexation Agreement, on both sides of Village Parkway, south of Tradition Parkway and north of the Martin County line at Becker Road (Southern Grove page). The city projects the corridor has the potential to generate more than 22,500 jobs, naming warehousing, healthcare, retail, office, hotel, and research and development as the sectors (Southern Grove page). How Tradition as a whole was planned, and how its roads were financed, is covered in the Tradition guide.

The city's Southern Grove page names the companies below as key developments in the corridor and gives a size, investment or job figure for most of them, reported below only as the city states them (Southern Grove page).

Two city documents give different sizes for the first plant. The Southern Grove fact sheet prepared for the 2018 land transfer describes the Tradition Center for Commerce as anchored by a new 400,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility for City Electric Supply (Southern Grove fact sheet), while the current Southern Grove page lists 411,000 square feet (Southern Grove page). Both figures are city statements from different dates.

The Port St. Lucie Southern Grove page names Cleveland Clinic and Florida International University under its innovation and research heading (Southern Grove page).

In the city's words, Cleveland Clinic established a seven story Tradition Hospital and its only research institute outside Cleveland, the Florida Research and Innovation Center, which opened in 2020 as a 107,000-square-foot building with biosafety level 3 labs (Southern Grove page). Florida International University followed with the Center for Translational Science, which the city says brought over 50 jobs (Southern Grove page).

The older fact sheet groups the medical and research uses under the name Tradition Center for Innovation, alongside the industrial Tradition Center for Commerce, and calls that Southern Grove land shovel ready, with entitlements for commercial and industrial building (Southern Grove fact sheet). The facility descriptions here are the city's; hours, services and hiring belong to the institutions themselves.

The city acquired the land in 2018, after the original developer exited the community, to prevent foreclosure and took on the role of master developer of the corridor (Southern Grove page).

The 2021 master plan dates the purchase to June 2018 and puts it at approximately 1,183 acres, managed through the city's Governmental Finance Corporation, later expanded by 37 acres for right-of-way changes and a pending parcel into a roughly 1,220-acre Southern Grove property (Southern Grove Master Plan, 2021). Those are master plan figures; the fact sheet written during the 2018 decision used different acreages for the land offered and the land recommended for transfer (Southern Grove fact sheet).

The pace of sales surprised the planners, by the city's account: though experts projected a 30-year build-out, the Southern Grove page says that by 2025 fewer than 20 acres remained available (Southern Grove page). The page also lists the parcels still offered, including three retail tracts of about 2.63, 7.66 and 10.73 acres marked as accepting letters of intent with retail use preferred (Southern Grove page).

The City of Port St. Lucie reports two state Florida Job Growth grants and a federal American Rescue Plan Act award for Southern Grove roads and utilities (Southern Grove page).

The grant rows above are from the city's Southern Grove page, which presents the awards as state recognition of the corridor's regional importance. Earlier backbone roads in the district, Village Parkway, Community Boulevard and the I-95 interchange at Becker Road among them, were financed through a 2007 special assessment district described in the fact sheet (Southern Grove fact sheet).

The Southern Grove Master Plan, adopted by Resolution 21-R18 on February 22, 2021, is the city's long-term development strategy for its Port St. Lucie holdings in the corridor (Southern Grove Master Plan).

The plan traces its start to the city's Strategic Plan, adopted in early 2019 with a goal of a diverse economy and employment opportunities and an initiative to facilitate the build-out of Southern Grove; in October 2019 the city engaged the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council to prepare an updated land development and infrastructure plan with a financial and market analysis and strategies for property disposition (Southern Grove Master Plan). Among its recommendations, the plan calls for securing gateway feature locations, including lakes with fountains, signage and lighting at Becker Road and I-95, to create a sense of arrival (Southern Grove Master Plan).

The idea is older than the plan. An Urban Land Institute advisory services panel met February 1-6, 2004 on a comprehensive development strategy for Port St. Lucie and a policy framework for the annexation area, and listed among its central questions how the city can attract and retain major employers offering high-paying jobs (ULI advisory services panel report, 2004).

FDOT's I-95 master plan study lists both the Becker Road and the Gatlin Boulevard/Tradition Parkway interchanges for study (FDOT I-95/SR-9 Multimodal Master Plan).

The city describes Southern Grove as running south from Tradition Parkway to Becker Road (Southern Grove page), and the fact sheet lists the I-95 interchange at Becker Road among the district's financed improvements (Southern Grove fact sheet).

FDOT describes that plan as covering a 71-mile segment of I-95 from the Palm Beach/Martin County line to the Indian River/Brevard County line, with the City of Port St. Lucie among the local partners, and also lists Crosstown Parkway among the interchanges under study (FDOT project page). The master plan for the corridor notes nearly four miles of uninterrupted frontage along I-95 (Southern Grove Master Plan).

The Port St. Lucie economy and growth guides cover the rest of the city's job base. Last verified: October 22, 2026, when each employer figure, acreage, grant and date here was matched again to the city's Southern Grove page and fact sheet, the 2021 master plan, the 2004 ULI panel report and the FDOT I-95 study page.