Fort Pierce Department of Urban Redevelopment . . .
Fort Pierce Department of Urban Redevelopment
The Fort Pierce Department of Urban Redevelopment was established in March, 2010.
The City of Fort Pierce is the oldest city on Florida’s celebrated Treasure Coast. As such, it has seen development activity since 1838, when the first palm log fort was built by American soldiers close to a stream and Native American burial mound just north of what is now Indian River Drive’s Old Fort Park. A sleepy agricultural town, Fort Pierce developed along the waterway that provided its first mass transportation, the Indian River Lagoon, developing as a steamboat stop in the 1880’s, as most river towns in southern Florida did. The arrival of the railroad in 1895 created another growth spurt and the downtown began to build on platted lots that were pineapple fields just a few months before. Cattle drives still originated in Fort Pierce, where the regions’ ranchers stocked up with supplies for the drive at the P.P. Cobb Store, originally built as an oyster cannery. In fact, many of our classic in-town neighborhoods got their starts as headquarters buildings and bunk houses for cattle ranches. Fort Pierce, along with the rest of Florida, boomed and built in the first quarter of the 20th century and, like the rest of Florida, we went bust in 1926, with the collapse of the Florida Land Rush, a couple of years before the Great Depression swept through the rest of the country and the World.
As you can see, much of Fort Pierce has been “built out” at one time, or another. Some of those projects still exist, such as the Old St. Anastasia School building at 10th Street and Orange Avenue, built in 1914. Lincoln Park was platted in 1913. Most of Historic Downtown has been built, leveled and rebuilt over the years. The St. Lucie County Court House, on South Second Street, replaced its predecessor. Only a small corner of the old yellow Fort Pierce Hotel remains. In one of the first redevelopment efforts of the private sector, the present P.P. Cobb store is a modern reconstruction of the old cannery, built in the early 1980’s.
The ongoing job of the Department of Urban Redevelopment is to look at the existing fabric of the City. . . its classic heritage architectural examples. . . the condition of its housing stock. . . the development of future planned project sites like the former King Power Plant . . . and envision how local government can assist growth and sustainability without sacrificing the beauty and small town charm that is our little piece of paradise; Fort Pierce.
The Department consists of three Divisions. The best known is the Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency (FPRA), a dependent special district of the City. Formed in 1982, the FPRA focuses its activities in a specific geographic section of town and is funded by an increment of your ad valorem tax revenues, or TIF.
The Housing and Urban Projects Division covers the entire City and focuses on SHIP and CDBG activities. SHIP (State Housing Initiatives Partnership) programs are State-funded housing efforts, overseen by the Florida Department of Community Affairs (DCA). CDBG (Community Development Block Grants) are Federally-funded development programs, overseen by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This Division does the work of the City’s former Community Services Department, which was disbanded in 2010.
Finally, the Grants Administration Division oversees the application for and management of grants for the benefit of the City and works with many other departments of local government to manage capital projects and programs, City-wide.
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