Another green space has joined Port St. Lucie’s growing roster of trails and brush for its residents, this time in The Port District near its epicenter.
The city opened “The Preserve,” a 13-acre natural property with a 3,000-foot trail network for casual hikers of all ages, March 4.
Five entrances flank the space (one near Pioneer Park playground; two each at the riverside boardwalk and Westmoreland Boulevard) leading visitors into a brief, albeit winding patch of foliage between the Port District and the Anchorage gated community.
The Preserve opened after construction began in August 2025 at a cost of $971,531, city records show. Much of its funding came via the Parks Impact Fee in Port St. Lucie’s budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
The City Council feted the opening of the Preserve found south of the Pioneer Park playground, 2454 SE Westmoreland Blvd., with a ribbon cutting in front of approximately 60 in a late afternoon ceremony.
Along with city funds, the Florida Inland Navigation District (FIND) gave Port St. Lucie a $400,000 grant to pay for the Preserve’s buildout, city releases say.
Mark Trabulsy, commissioner of the St. Lucie County FIND chapter, presented the City Council with a check through his organization’s Waterway Assistance Program at the ribbon cutting.
The Port District Preserve joins at least “four dozen different projects” to which FIND gave nearly “$12 million” in grants since 1986, Trabulsy said after the ceremony.
Each of these projects must serve the “fundamental purpose of providing access, for the public, to waterways,” Trabulsy added. Examples thereof include “a boat ramp or even a parking lot for a boat ramp.”
While a new green space, in concept, was another success in the city’s “Naturally PSL” portfolio (a program in effect since 2025), the ongoing threat of countywide drought tarnished some of the Preserve’s anticipated luster.
The attraction opened to bridges over evaporated streams and underbrush lined with dead plants. Both are symptomatic of the winter’s dry conditions further aggravated by the historic early February cold snap.
“We have a lot of different issues that go along with the waterways, but a lot of it has to do with Mother Nature (and) man-made situations,” Trabulsy said. “Each one’s different.”
Despite its natural features being vulnerable to dramatic shifts in the county’s climate, visitors remain hopeful the Preserve can introduce them to natural quiet and wider hiking access, such as at the Oxbow Preserve farther north.
The greater acreage at green spaces like Oxbow contrasts with the bucolic, yet still urbanized Port District Preserve, with boat engines audibly whirring in the river and pickleballs smacking in Anchorage directly south.
Speaking of sound, Olivia Montiel relished bringing in a quieter atmosphere to the new space.
She celebrated the opening with a “sound bath” near the Port District entrance. A collage of pre-recorded birdsong accompanied the hum of colorful glass bowls sounded by a felt-lined hammer at her table. (She holds regular sound bath sessions every first Thursday evening at the PSL Community Center, 2195 SE Airoso Blvd.)
Four years of living in the city with her two children brought her and her family access to natural areas the Port District may now provide a gateway for. “We’re outside all the time and Port St. Lucie is really family-centered,” she said of her family’s connection to county trails. “I feel like in the last four years, things have just bloomed.”
For the past two years, artist and self-proclaimed “river warrior” Brenda Leigh has designed a concrete mural of mangroves and wildlife at the public bathroom near the Port District parking lot. Her work there, she said, enabled her to practice ecological “activism without anger.”
“It only concerns me aesthetically, but I know it’s all going to come back,” Leigh said of the drought damaging the new Preserve. “All we need is a week of rain and everything will be beautiful again.”
Like Montiel, Leigh hopes the Port District can give visitors a taste of the county’s many trails.
“Let’s face it: Port St. Lucie is a very crowded city,” Leigh said. “Way too much traffic and what I see just here at the park is how desperately kids need to get their feet in the grass.” She added, “adults too, most especially adults.”