Three Corners Redevelopment — Vero Beach, Florida

Three Corners is the City of Vero Beach plan to turn its own lagoon waterfront at the foot of the Alma Lee Loy Bridge into a public dining, shopping, lodging and boating district. The City of Vero Beach calls the site the 38-acre waterfront parcel known as Three Corners located at the base of the 17th Street (Alma Lee Loy) bridge, and ranks it as the most valuable publicly owned waterfront on Florida's East Coast. The name comes from the way the bridge, the Indian River Lagoon and Indian River Boulevard divide the land into separate corners.

The project is a lease, not a sale. Vero Beach keeps the land and, under the plan being negotiated in 2026, would rent the northern parcel to a private developer that builds and runs a hotel, marina, restaurants and shops open to the public. As of the September 8, 2026 City Council meeting, the city and its chosen developer were still working through a master development agreement, and the third negotiating extension ran to October 12, 2026, according to Vero Beach 32963.

Three Corners is two very different properties joined by the 17th Street bridge. North of the bridge is the former power plant tract, roughly 17 acres, which Vero News reported in May 2025 had been appraised at $17 million in 2024. That parcel still holds the shell of the Big Blue generating plant, which stopped running in 2015. South of the bridge sits about 17 more acres containing the operating Vero Beach wastewater plant.

The charter language quoted by the city fixes the northern boundary in plain terms: north of the Alma Lee Loy (17th Street) Bridge, west of the Indian River and east of Indian River Boulevard. A smaller strip west of Indian River Boulevard, once leased by the U.S. Post Office, is the only part of the Three Corners land the charter would let Vero Beach sell, City Manager Monte Falls told the council in September 2026, and he said no sale of that strip had been discussed.

The southern half is waiting on a move. Vero Beach is building a replacement sewer plant at Vero Beach Regional Airport, and city Water and Sewer Director Rob Bolton told Vero News in December 2025 that the lagoon plant would run until the new one is fully operational in the summer of 2028. Only then can the remaining treatment structures south of the bridge be cleared.

The planning record is long. According to the city's project timeline, DPZ CoDesign presented its process to the Vero Beach City Council on November 19, 2019, the same day the SpeakUpVeroBeach.com platform opened for ideas. The public toured the power plant in January 2020, and a charrette week of public workshops ran January 27 to 31, 2020 at the Vero Beach Community Center. DPZ drew five scenarios, ranging from mothballing the site to cultural and recreational use to maximum development.

Adoption took two more years. The timeline shows the council declined to adopt the plan on July 21, 2020 and again on August 18, 2020, after a post-pandemic version added more open space and outdoor dining. The council finally adopted the Three Corners Master Concept Plan on February 1, 2022 by Resolution 2022-03. Because the power plant tract is one of the 26 properties protected by Section 5.05 of the City Charter, voters then had to agree to commercial leasing, which they did with 79 percent support on November 8, 2022.

Zoning followed. The Three Corners Master Concept page records that on February 27, 2024 the council adopted Ordinance 2024-03, writing the master concept into the Vero Beach Comprehensive Plan, and that on August 12, 2025 it adopted Ordinance 2025-08, creating the Three Corners Waterfront District in Chapter 62 of the land development regulations. Those two votes set the rules any developer must build under.

Picking a developer took two rounds. In the first round, Vero News reported in March 2026, four teams proposed projects ranging from $250 million to $500 million. The council chose the SuDa group in May 2024, then, as Vero News reported in December 2024, disqualified that group for violating the terms of the bidding process and started over with a stricter solicitation.

Only two teams answered the second call by December 17, 2024: Clearpath Services of Bloomington, Indiana, and The Blue at Vero Beach, LLC, led by Madison Marquette. The city's evaluation committee, with PFM Financial Advisors and Stantec reviewing costs and financing, ranked them in public meetings on March 4 and March 31, 2025. On April 22, 2025 the Vero Beach City Council selected Clearpath as preferred developer, and on May 6, 2025 the city gave it 90 days to document its financial capacity.

Clearpath had lost a major backer before bidding. To close that gap, its leaders and Madison Marquette agreed in September 2025 to run the project as a 50-50 joint venture, with Madison Marquette also bringing in the commercial real estate firm CBRE, Vero News reported. The combined entity appears in city and press records as Clear Blue and ClearBlue Holdings. On November 4, 2025 the council voted unanimously to open negotiations with the merged team.

The basic structure is a 99-year ground lease of the Three Corners land, confirmed by city negotiators in late 2025. Before talks could start, the city's solicitation required a $50,000 good-faith deposit, $25,000 of it non-refundable, Vero News reported on December 5, 2025. The city delivered a term sheet in February 2026, and the developer paid the deposit in March 2026, starting a 120-day negotiation clock.

That clock has been reset three times. Vero News reported that the council added 30 days when the first window ran out, approved a second 30-day extension on August 11, 2026, the day city staff returned a marked-up master development agreement, and, per Vero Beach 32963, granted a third on September 8, 2026. Financing disclosures were still outstanding at that meeting; Falls later said they had arrived. Council member Linda Moore said in August 2026 that she did not think she would support another extension.

The money for Vero Beach is modest by design. Consultants reviewing Clearpath's plan projected stabilized annual net revenues of slightly more than $34 million in the sixth year of operations, but Vero News estimated in May 2025 that the city's own take from lease payments, property taxes and sales tax would be roughly $1.2 million to $1.5 million a year, before policing costs of up to $500,000. Clearpath's proposal included 245 hotel rooms, and none of that county tourist tax flows to the city. Mayor John Cotugno said at the time that profit was never the motivation.

The first new building on Three Corners land is not the developer's. On August 8, 2023 the Vero Beach City Council approved a lease with the Youth Sailing Foundation for sailing facilities on the wastewater plant side. A reclaimed-water storage tank came down on December 1, 2025, which, Vero News reported, cleared the site for the construction of the foundation's 10,000-square-foot sailing center beside a public lagoon park with boat ramps, a pier and pavilions.

The foundation told Vero News in August 2026 that its $6.4 million budget for the building, pier, pavilions, boat ramps, playground and property was fully funded, and that the grand opening was set for December 11, 2026. The rest of the south parcel stays tied to the master deal: the city's solicitation gives the Three Corners developer right of first refusal on land south of the bridge, excluding the three lagoon-front acres leased to the foundation.

On the north side, the calendar is further out. City project staff said in late 2025 that no significant work on the power plant parcel was expected before 2027, and a signed agreement must still be followed by design, demolition and building permits and Florida Department of Environmental Protection review to protect the Indian River Lagoon.