Port St. Lucie has plenty of shiny new growth in Tradition and Southern Grove. But the older commercial corridors — the aging plazas and half-empty strip centers — are a different story, and the city just made a move to fix that.
On April 28, 2026, the city submitted three priority areas to Florida's Department of Commerce to be nominated as federal Opportunity Zones. Top of the list is the Walton and One corridor, followed by a section of U.S. 1 and a stretch of Port St. Lucie Boulevard.
If you're fuzzy on what an Opportunity Zone is: it's a federal designation that hands tax incentives to investors who put money into economically distressed areas. The idea is to nudge private dollars toward neighborhoods that the market has been skipping over.
Walton and One is the centerpiece. City officials believe the designation could 'transform this aging commercial corridor, enhance property values, and drive economic development.' It's a frank acknowledgment that not every part of PSL is booming equally.
Vice Mayor Jolien Caraballo didn't sugarcoat it. 'We have some that are thriving, but we do have some businesses that are dying, and there's some empty plazas,' she said — the kind of plain talk that tells you the city sees the problem clearly.
The effort has had some national attention, too: U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner recently visited, and Mayor Shannon Martin and the city's strategic initiatives team have been pushing the nominations forward.
For the 772, this is less flashy than a new factory or a hotel — but arguably just as important. Reviving the corridors locals actually drive every day is how a fast-growing city avoids leaving its older neighborhoods behind. Now it's up to the state to decide which zones make the cut.