PORT ST. LUCIE — When city officials celebrated the grand opening of the harbor area earlier this month during Port Fest, much of the focus was on Pioneer Park’s new playground and other completed parts of the area, such as the bandstand and lawn.
However, other planned elements of the Harbor District will have to wait for future festivities once they are completed.
A destination for food and drink
The River Food Garden is the largest unfinished part of the Port District, and the development group SuDa hopes it will become a dining destination, bringing people from across the Treasure Coast to the North Fork of the St. Lucie River.
Planned is a complex of seven bars or restaurants, a fire pit and river access. Plans include a tiki bar — spelled “tequi bar” — a main restaurant with a rooftop bar, a pizzeria, grill, another bar and Asian and Mediterranean restaurants. SuDa Founding Managing Partner Gaurav Butani said the process of finding potential restaurant partners to operate the various locations is ongoing.
Butani said the city is still finalizing the work before handing the business over to SuDa. City spokesperson Sarah Prohaska said the project is going through the permitting process.
In the meantime, Butani said, SuDa has been carrying out architectural and engineering work in the hope that it can begin construction immediately.
“We’ve worked very hard, and so has the city. The city has done everything it can to get our building permits,” he said.
While he cautioned that construction timelines could be fluid, Butani said he could open River Food Garden late next year. But it is also possible that the restaurants will open in phases and, for example, the tiki bar will open earlier.
Houses will teach the history of Port St. Lucie
The two existing buildings in the Havenkwartier complex will remain and undergo their own process of renovation and restoration. Both will be managed by the Port St. Lucie Historical Society.
The Peacock House, built in 1917, will be “for the most part” a static representation of a home from the 1920s, Patricia Christensen, president of the Historical Society, said in an email. It will “show people what life in Florida was like back then,” Christensen said.
Renovations there could take three years, Christensen said.
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The other building, The Peacock Lodge, was built in 1952 and will house the Port St Lucie History Museum and Education Center. The Historical Society does not yet have an occupancy permit, Christensen said, but it does have a permit to move items into the building.
“We have been and will continue to organize and review more than sixty years of documents, files, collections and photographs and prepare things for a formal opening,” Christensen said.
According to Christensen, the opening is currently scheduled for August.
Wicker Perlis is TCPalm’s Watchdog reporter for St. Lucie County. You can reach him at wicker.perlis@tcpalm.com.
This article originally appeared in Treasure Coast Newspapers: Restaurants, bars and historic sites still in the making at the harbor site
