Submarine Veterans Memorial Park would be the new name for a small park on Port St. Lucie’s Crosstown Parkway under a proposal by a Treasure Coast veterans group.
But a group featuring former state Senate President Ken Pruitt called for the park to be named in honor of the late Carl Reddish, who owned a small nursery on the site and sold a variety of trees to many city residents.
As a result of the conundrum about naming the six-acre park on the southeast corner of Crosstown Parkway and Floresta Drive, the City Council decided to hold a workshop on the issue in several months.
The other options were asking the public for nominations for the park’s name, honoring one of the two requests, or deciding not to name the recreational and drainage area.
“Are we going to now have all these different open spaces named?” asked Vice Mayor Shannon Martin. “I definitely believe this should be a workshop item for us to hash out and discuss.”
Mayor Greg Oravec and Councilmembers John Carvelli and Jolien Caraballo said they also want to have a lengthy discussion about the naming issue. “I think we need to be consistent,” Carvelli said. “I think we need to have a workshop to discuss what we want to do rather than jump the gun and start the process.”
City Manager Russ Blackburn said the submarine veterans and the Reddish family independently took the initiative to submit the proposals to name the six-acre park on Crosstown Parkway.
An alternative to renaming the park would be to plant trees and place a plaque at the trunk explaining why an individual was being honored, Blackburn said.
The family of a worker on the Crosstown Parkway project who died raised money for a commemorative park bench on the parkway, Blackburn said.
Oravec suggested naming Mid-Port Lake at Veterans Memorial Park in honor of the submarine veterans.
The city has been struggling to determine a name for the 10-acre park under construction on Westmoreland Boulevard south of Port St. Lucie Boulevard where the Riverwalk Boardwalk will end, Oravec said.
“There’s a certain sentiment out in the community that we shouldn’t name it anything like Pruitt’s Fish Camp because Bert Pruitt wasn’t the best guy,” Oravec said.
“But that’s what everyone knew it as,” Oravec said. “People from all over the country came to Pruitt’s Fish Camp. I don’t like that we run away from our history because history is colorful.”
