FORT PIERCE – The St. Lucie County Planning & Zoning Commission majority voted July 16 to temporarily kick the can on a developer’s rezoning request for property within the Towns, Villages & Countryside Overlay District in hopes that staff and the applicant’s land planner can come to terms.
The discussion between Planner Irene Szedlmayer, Landscape Architect Brad Currie and some commissioners revealed smoldering discontent with the novel TVC Future Land Use, which was adopted in the mid-2000s and has only seen minimal development since its inception. Szedlmayer introduced the agenda item that evening on the rezoning and regulating plan for the proposed Club at Indrio Creek development.
“The property is 126 acres between Emerson Avenue and Seminole Road about 1,000 feet south of Indrio Road,” she said. “It is currently zoned AG-1, which is up to one dwelling unit per acre. The proposal is for rezoning from AG-1 to PTV, Planned Towns & Villages. The property is inside the Urban Services Boundary, eligible for regional water and wastewater and subject to different rules in the TVC than if it were outside the Urban Services Boundary.”
Szedlmayer then described the applicant’s preliminary development plan.
“It provides for 375 dwellings,” she continued. “There are 246 townhomes, 129 single-family homes, two civic building lots, two clubhouses/amenity areas [and] a new east-west public street connecting Seminole and Emerson that is consistent with the Right-of-Way Protection Plan and the North County Future Street Network. They are proposing 38 acres of common open space including the flow-way, the restored native habitat, park and recreation areas and landscape buffers.”
That dense of a development is only made possible in the TVC through the utilization of a complex formula derived from the Transferable Development Value Map, which provides distinct density multiplier amounts in exchange for acreage dedicated to open or green space.
“Another core provision in the TVC Code is the transfer of development rights,” Szedlmayer explained. “You have that basic one-dwelling-unit-an-acre density, and some of it is two dwelling units an acre. The TVC allows property owners to increase that density [through] density multipliers for a land area that’s dedicated to certain preferred or encouraged uses. For example, countryside is an encouraged use [and] restoring or creating native habitat is a preferred use.”
After Szedlmayer displayed the project’s internal street grid and detailed the external street connections, she expressed her opposition to both and recommended the P&Z Board continue the item until its August meeting to allow her and the applicant more time to hash out solutions.
“Staff believes the proposed preliminary regulation plan fails to meet compliance with the comprehensive plan and the land development code,” she concluded. “Staff therefore recommends the Planning & Zoning Commission consider the presentations, ask questions, make suggestions and continue the public hearing until its meeting scheduled for Aug. 18. If you don’t want to continue and want to make an express recommendation, staff has prepared a list of conditions of approval.”
Commissioner Ed Lounds was the first Board member to pose a series of questions to staff, culminating with concerns about the project’s sole access point via Emerson Avenue.
“What is the county’s recommendation for that roadway?” he asked. “Are we going to pave Emerson Avenue from one end of the property to the other, or just from the exits?”
“Any development that requires site plan approval will have to provide access via paved roads,” Szedlmayer replied. “Emerson would be improved to county standards by the applicant to this point.”
“We’re not going to exit onto Seminole?” Commissioner Lounds prodded.
In her response, Szedlmayer recommeded him of her recommendation to table.
“We thought perhaps we could get your input and come back,” she said. “Staff believes we need connectivity to Seminole. If the Commission wishes to not continue it and make a recommendation, we are proposing they pave Seminole Road within the 50-foot right of way and a sidewalk be provided on Seminole.”
The applicant’s representative then provided his own presentation, defending his internal and external street connections and insisting that professional land planners sit around and joke about the complexities of the TVC.
“For everyone’s reminder, this is the first time, in 2026, that you’ve had a PTV before you,” Currie said. “One of the planners I was with said, you could have 10 different planners look at the TVC and come back with 10 different plans. That’s a problem. When we look at a straight zoning district, it’s pretty clear: There’s setbacks, a building height [and] you have your number of units. The TVC is the exact opposite. Irene and I are planners, and we happen to have a different opinion of how the TVC should be implemented.”
Currie also believes that St. Lucie County officials dropped the ball the year they adopted the TVC, reading directly from the comprehensive plan’s references to local water management districts.
“St. Lucie County will coordinate with SFWMD and FPFWCD to create, within six months of the effective date of the TVC element, an institutional structure to facilitate the implementation of a surface water and stormwater management system,” he read.“The county had something to do six months after it was adopted – they never did it – so we continue to implement a flow-way requirement when the county didn’t live up to their end of the bargain, and I think that’s a problem.”
During a subsequent interaction between Currie and Board Member William O’Dell, the former admitted he preferred a Board recommendation that evening versus tabling the request.
“I’ve been working on this for a year and a half,” he said. “My client has got a due-diligence period that ends in December, and he has to make a decision. Every day will be really important to us, so I would rather move forward at this time.”
Commissioner Ed Lounds – who actually served on the P&Z Board when the county passed the TVC, suggested the overlay was never meant to be successful.
“I bled sitting on this Board in 2009 with commissioners that tried to push TVC huts, hovels and pup-tents through,” he said. “I’m convinced the reason it was developed was to stop development in the northwest portion of St. Lucie County because of one development at Indrio and Emerson Avenue that had gotten started and they didn’t like it.”
After much further Board discussion, Vice-Chairman Board Member Lawrence “Beau” Slay acknowledged his distaste for the TVC as well and called for its demise.
“I think it’s unfair to developers and to the people because of the amount of crap y’all have to jump through to even put a plan together,” he said. “Nothing ever gets built [and] I think it’s a waste of time. I reached out to Kori [Planning Manager Benton] the other day because my intention coming into this meeting today was to say, how do we remove the TVC?”
After two public speakers protested the latest TVC rezoning request, the Planning & Zoning Commissioner voted 4-1 to table the request until Aug. 18, with Vice-Chairman Slay dissenting.
County Communications Director Erick Gill said via email Aug. 3 that a handful of projects have progressed under the TVC Overlay in recent years, including the Cabo Rio RV Resort, Treasure Coast Vault, Bedner Farms NW (also known as The Grove), FPL Interstate Solar and some projects within the Kings Highway Industrial Park.