New Construction and Growth in Port St. Lucie

The Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey counts 2,814 single-family housing units authorized in Port St. Lucie in 2025, valued at $835,311,330, after 3,528 single-family units in 2024.

The survey's annual place files report, for each permit office, the buildings, units and construction value authorized by building permits, split by building size; Port St. Lucie reports all 12 months in both years (Census Building Permits Survey, South Region places, 2025 annual; Census Building Permits Survey, South Region places, 2024 annual). The table copies the Port St. Lucie rows as the Census files print them.

For scale on the Treasure Coast, the same 2025 file shows the City of Fort Pierce with 133 single-family units authorized (Census Building Permits Survey, 2025 annual). The Census figures count units authorized by permit in each year, which is a different measure from homes completed or sold.

Port St. Lucie is called a platted community because its original developer subdivided 66 square miles into mostly single-family lots from the 1950s through the 1980s, with only minimal roads and drainage.

The City of Port St. Lucie explains that General Development Corporation (GDC) platted the land into single-family lots and tracts for other uses at a time when regulations were minimal and water, sewer and environmental needs were not paramount, and that GDC incorporated the properties it owned into the city in 1961 (City of Port St. Lucie growth and development FAQ). Planning areas 1, 2, 3, 4N, 4S, 5, 6 and 7 make up that original incorporated city, and the city notes that certain GDC-platted areas are subject to a decision of the DCA that found them grandfathered or vested for single-family use regardless of later plan changes.

The same city page gives the change since incorporation, from fewer than 300 residents in 1961 to more than 260,000 by 2025, and calls Port St. Lucie the sixth largest city in Florida.

Development outside Port St. Lucie's original plat sits in St. Lucie West, on land west of Interstate 95 in Tradition, Southern Grove, Western Grove, Riverland and Wilson Groves, and on some properties along US 1.

The city's growth FAQ lists those areas, plus some properties along US 1, as outside the original plat (Port St. Lucie growth and development FAQ). The Future Land Use Element of the Port St. Lucie Comprehensive Plan adds the numbers behind the westward growth: the city covered 78 square miles when the 1998 Comprehensive Plan was adopted, and the element, adopted October 26, 2020, gives its current size as approximately 120.4 square miles, after 35 voluntary annexations between 2000 and 2008 totaling 24,013 acres, or 37.5 square miles (Port St. Lucie Future Land Use Element).

Most of that annexed acreage sits west of Interstate 95 in what the plan calls the Western Annexation Area, whose boundaries follow the water and sewer service lines set when the city bought General Development Utilities from St. Lucie County in 1994; it includes seven large-scale Developments of Regional Impact (DRIs) and several smaller planned mixed-use and residential communities (Port St. Lucie Future Land Use Element). The Tradition and St. Lucie West guides describe two of those communities.

Low Density Residential covers 39 percent of Port St. Lucie's future land use map and New Community Development (NCD), the category used for the big western projects, covers about 19 percent.

The Future Land Use Element says the NCD district was created for Developments of Regional Impact to reflect their mixed-use nature, allows residential, commercial, industrial and institutional uses, and was adopted into the Port St. Lucie Comprehensive Plan in 2003 as part of the Westchester (Tradition) amendment (Port St. Lucie Future Land Use Element). For existing land use, the element puts agricultural uses west of I-95 at 22.85 percent of the city, Master Planned Unit Development at 15.36 percent, and exclusive commercial and industrial uses at 1.68 and 0.74 percent.

The city contrasts its platted lots with Planned Unit Development (PUD) zoning, which it describes as a zoning classification that lets an owner set its own standards such as lot size, house size and setbacks, under Section 158.170 of the Zoning Code (Port St. Lucie growth and development FAQ). The city's first Comprehensive Plan was approved in 1980 and its first plan adopted by ordinance came in 1983, after state law began requiring legally binding plans.

Southern Grove is a 3,605-acre Development of Regional Impact south of Tradition Parkway that the city treats as its future jobs corridor, and Western Grove is a 1,593-acre area that can eventually hold 4,000 homes.

The city's Southern Grove fact sheet, written around the 2018 change in land ownership, places Southern Grove east and west of Village Parkway between Tradition Parkway and the Martin County line by Becker Road, as part of an 8,200-acre region marketed as Tradition, and says it is approved for research and development, industrial, commercial and residential uses (City of Port St. Lucie Southern Grove fact sheet). It describes 1,321 acres designated an employment center in a 2004 Urban Land Institute report and a jobs corridor with the potential for more than 22,500 jobs, and says a Special Assessment District was set up in 2007 to fund $165,529,700 in Southern Grove infrastructure.

The same fact sheet describes Western Grove as the undeveloped western region of Tradition, 1,593 acres that can eventually be developed into 4,000 residential units; it also records that the landowner of the time had a conditional agreement to sell the residential land in both areas to a home builder (Southern Grove fact sheet). The city's land use plan lists both the Tradition DRI and the Western Grove DRI under New Community Development (Port St. Lucie Future Land Use Element).

New Port St. Lucie development pays impact fees set by city schedule, including a public building impact fee whose Ordinance 25-42 the city posts, and goes through the Planning and Zoning Department's online review portal.

The city describes public building impact fees as one-time charges on new development that help fund public facilities needed to serve new residents, and its page holds the 2025 study, the drafts reviewed at workshops held in July and August 2025, the workshop questions and answers, and Ordinance 25-42 (Port St. Lucie Public Building Impact Fees page). The Planning and Zoning page posts the development impact fee schedule effective 6/30/26, marks earlier schedules expired, and also posts a mobility impact fee schedule effective 2022 (Port St. Lucie Planning and Zoning Applications, Fees and Guides).

Applications go through the Development Application Review portal at fusion.cityofpsl.com; the department lists annexation, comprehensive plan amendment, PUD, rezoning, site plan and subdivision plat applications, notes a subdivision plat process updated under SB 812 effective October 1, 2024, and warns that the city does not accept payments by wire transfer (Port St. Lucie Planning and Zoning Applications, Fees and Guides). Pre-application meetings for new projects cost $430, and questions go to Planning and Zoning at 772-871-5213.

Port St. Lucie residents can ask about a development through the city's 1PSL service system at 772-871-1775, and any person or organization may petition for a comprehensive plan amendment.

The growth FAQ says Section 151.05(B) of the City Code lets any person or organization, including federal, state and city agencies, petition for an amendment to the Comprehensive Plan under Chapter 163, Part II, Florida Statutes, and that Section 158.316(C)(2) of the Zoning Code lets the City Council, the Planning and Zoning Board, city departments and owners of real property in Port St. Lucie start a rezoning (Port St. Lucie growth and development FAQ).

The public building impact fee was a recent example of that process in public view: the city scheduled workshops and a City Council meeting at City Hall, 121 SW Port St. Lucie Blvd., and posted the drafts, the 2025 study, a workshop question and answer session and Ordinance 25-42 on one page (Port St. Lucie Public Building Impact Fees page). The Census Bureau posts each year's place file in the same format, so the Port St. Lucie row can be compared year to year (Census Building Permits Survey, 2025 annual).

Last verified: October 22, 2026, against the 2024 and 2025 Census Building Permits Survey place files, the Port St. Lucie growth FAQ, Future Land Use Element, Southern Grove fact sheet and both Planning and Zoning fee pages, re-read for this Port St. Lucie new construction guide.