PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (CBS12) \u2014 The debate over a new United Soccer League (USL) stadium in Port St. Lucie continues, as the City Council held a special counsel meeting Monday to discuss the facility’s proposed leasing agreement and address mounting resident concerns. The public outcry focuses largely on the location, with a petition opposing the project having gathered a significant number of signatures since its creation last week.<\/p>\n
Kearsten Bernard, who represents the petition’s organizers, criticized the planned site, even though she isn’t against the stadium itself. \u201cWe think it\u2019s kind of silly where they\u2019re putting it. So we\u2019d rather it be somewhere else. We don\u2019t care that the stadium\u2019s coming; we just don\u2019t want it where it\u2019s going. The noise ordinances and the traffic is already crazy,\u201d Bernard said.<\/p>\n
See also: ‘No Kings’ protest leads to 73-year-old Florida woman’s arrest for flag-snatching incident<\/a><\/p>\n CRA Director Jennifer Davis presented the project’s benefits to the Council, emphasizing the financial and logistical safeguards for the city. Davis explained that the City won’t be financially responsible for the stadium until a year after completion. Safeguards are in place in case the developer backs out or the tax revenue doesn’t meet current estimates.<\/p>\n \u201cSo when we did estimates, we looked at today\u2019s valuation within that CRA, and our finance team did a very conservative estimate of about a 2.5% increase in taxable revenue over the years. So they looked ahead about 10 years to see how that would play out,\u201d Davis said. This conservative estimate claims the area will see a nearly $3 million increase in tax revenue by 2035.<\/p>\n Council members also addressed public worries about previous failed Port St. Lucie projects. Councilman Dave Pickett assured the public that the contract specifically addresses those issues. \u201cOne thing I don\u2019t want us to get involved in again is a Torrey Pines or a Digital Domain. And this contract specifically addressed those issues to make sure that we do not get ourselves back in a situation like that,\u201d Pickett said.<\/p>\n Regarding traffic concerns, the meeting did not give a specific timeline for when those assessments will happen. However, the lease agreement stipulates that the operator must provide a traffic management plan and pay for additional police presence during events. The Police Chief stated that he thinks traffic flow will be better than at the St. Lucie Mets stadium, as the USL stadium is smaller and will have a larger access road.<\/p>\n This is just the first of two public meetings to discuss the leasing agreement. The next one is scheduled for November 4th at 5 p.m. at City Hall.<\/p>\n Find more ways to stay up to date with your latest local news. Sign up for our newsletter<\/a> to get the day’s top headlines delivered right to your inbox. Subscribe to our YouTube channel <\/a>for the biggest stories and can’t miss video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (CBS12) \u2014 The debate over a new United Soccer League (USL) stadium in Port…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[832,12032,12029,171,173,172,12028,12031,12030,12027],"class_list":{"0":"post-13562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-port-st-lucie","8":"tag-city-council","9":"tag-community-petition","10":"tag-leasing-agreement","11":"tag-port-st-lucie","12":"tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","13":"tag-port-st-lucie-news","14":"tag-public-concerns","15":"tag-tax-revenue","16":"tag-traffic-management","17":"tag-usl-stadium"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}