Starting this week, visitors to the future Riverfront Park will have to navigate around heavy equipment as crews prepare the site for the planned Historic Village. The crews will be leveling the ground and laying the foundations for the historic structures known as the Peacock Ranch Lodge and House.
In June, the buildings will be relocated from undeveloped land in the PGA Verano community to the northeast corner of park property, just south of the Port St. Lucie Botanical Gardens. The structures will be loaded onto trucks and make a slow, two-day drive down St. Lucie West Boulevard and Floresta Drive.
The city hopes to have the first phase of the project – the relocation and weatherproofing of the buildings – completed by the end of September.
Preserving the turn-of-the-century buildings has been a high priority for the Port St. Lucie Historical Society. The organization sees the acquisition and preservation of the buildings as a chance to possibly create a history museum as well as begin saving relics of the young city’s past.
The Historical Society has helped – and continues to help – secure grant funding to offset some of the expenses for the village. Other organizations are also encouraged to provide grant-writing assistance.
“It all got back-burnered,” Patricia Christensen said of partnering with a local veterans group a decade ago. With the Great Recession, much of what the nonprofit groups had hoped to accomplish got way-laid. Christensen is the vice chair of the Historical Society.
She points to the challenges long-established cities have in preserving their history as a reason why Port St. Lucie is lucky to get started on preserving its own. “We have a very short history,” Christensen said.
The Peacock Ranch structures, though technically not in the City of Port St. Lucie when first built, were annexed into the city about six years ago and provide a glimpse into what life was like in St. Lucie County in the early 1900s.
The house was built in 1917 and the lodge in the 1950s.
An extension that had been added to the house will not be relocated as part of the historic village, according to Bridget Kean, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency director. To return the historic house back to what it would have looked like in 1917, though, a new dormer will be constructed. Dormers are roofed structures that usually have a window.
Both the house and the lodge will receive new roofs once they are placed on their permanent foundations at Riverfront Park. The structures will also be secured against the elements until such time as funding is available for renovating the interiors.
Despite an off-hand remark at a City Council meeting in April to the contrary, the buildings are not infested with termites, according to Kean. One area does have termite damage, she said, which will be treated.
Kean explained that the buildings were constructed with Miami-Dade County pine – a seriously hard wood that termites tend to leave alone.
It’s unknown just how much money renovating the structures will ultimately cost the city, as funding is dependent on grant awards. “It’s hard to say,” Kean said.
Even still, the council has agreed that preserving the structures is important to the city.
“To me, it’s the cultural significance,” said Councilwoman Jolien Caraballo, who is the current executive director of the Port St. Lucie Historical Society. By preserving Peacock Ranch’s lodge and house, the city can enhance its cultural offerings.
“This is our one shot,” she told St. Lucie Voice.
As Kean noted, “If you don’t preserve them, they get destroyed.”