After deliberations since January 2024, the Port St. Lucie City Council unanimously struck down adding 850 homes to the 464.5-acre Lulfs Groves development Sept. 22.
An amendment to change the property into the Astoria gated community would have added up to 1,350 residential units from an initially proposed 500, according to proposals by developers of D.R. Horton and Lucido & Associates.
The amendment would have rezoned all 2.4 million square feet of industrial space in Lulfs Groves, 150,000 square feet of city use, and 50,000 square feet of office space to residential use.
Other changes included the addition of a 250-foot-wide buffer along its northern perimeter, 12 acres for a park, and 5 acres split between a new fire station and “future institutional use,” a presentation said.
Developers disagreed with the city on “site-related” mobility requirements throughout subsequent amendment readings over the past 18 months, deputy planning director Bridget Kean said on the dais.
More houses would have also necessitated the expansion of Glades Wastewater Plant directly north, city Utilities director Kevin Matyjaszek said.
He added, however, that these expansions would add more to utility costs, and emit more noise pollution and malodors for residents there, including the 249-acre Copper Creek community.
Much of these disagreements arose through “a struggle over whether or not” the proposed Astoria Boulevard would be built along Glades Cut-Off Road, Mayor Shannon Martin said before she cast her vote.
Council member Anthona Bonna concurred. “D.R. Horton is an affordable developer,” he said, “but we cannot, at this time, add new entitlements that are not already entitled.”
“The site was never the right type of development,” Vice Mayor Jolien Caraballo said via Zoom call from Tallahassee. “It should be industrial.”
Council member David Pickett shared his disapproval over traffic projections.
“The five of us do not get much opportunity to say ‘no’ to growth, but we do today,” he said.
Council member Stephanie Morgan brought up a litany of commuter complaints at Glades Cut-Off Road – a county road – before her vote. “It’s disgusting, it’s horrible and they need to do something.
“I don’t want to live next to heavy industrial, and I don’t have any examples of what that would be,” she added of the Lulfs industrial plats planned near Copper Creek.
The City Council first voted 3-1 to let developers draft plans for Lulfs Groves at their Jan. 22, 2024, meeting, Port St. Lucie records show. Caraballo dissented; Morgan was absent.