More than six years after the idea was hatched for a major riverside development on the site of the city’s shuttered power plant, Vero Beach officials are negotiating actionable terms with a capable developer.
For a long time, the Three Corners project has felt less like a development and more like a civic endurance test. Starts. Stops. Resets. Debate. Now, finally, the project has crossed a major hurdle separating concept from execution.
Last month, the city completed a term sheet that outlines the deal between Vero Beach and the development team and presented it to the developers.
A few weeks later, on March 9, the developers handed over a long-overdue $50,000 good-faith deposit, formally triggering the start of negotiations. “That’s really the moment the clock starts,” said Vero Beach project manager Peter Polk. “The check has been received, and the negotiation period has officially begun.”
The payment, issued by Clearpath Services on behalf of a newly formed joint venture with Madison Marquette, marks the first tangible financial commitment by a developer after years of planning, resets and public doubt.
The plan for a public mixed use riverfront development emerged from a thoughtful and thorough community planning process launched in 2019, when urban planner Andrés Duany and DPZ CoDesign led a series of public workshops and charrettes.
The resulting concept envisioned the transformation of 38 acres where the city’s defunct power plant and current sewer plant now stand into a vibrant riverfront district with a hotel, marina, restaurants, shops and multiple public amenities.
Vero Beach is the only city along the Treasure and Space Coasts that does not have a lively riverfront entertainment and lodging district, and Three Corners was shaped as a remedy for that glaring deficit.
In 2022, voters reinforced that vision, approving a referendum by nearly 80 percent to allow commercial development on the former power plant site.
What followed was anything but linear. A developer selection process drew four solid contenders proposing projects that ranged from $250 million to $500 million. The city and project committee enthusiastically picked the most grandiose plan – and then promptly pulled the plug on the whole process, blaming violations of request-for-proposal rules, saying the winning developer sent emails that were not allowed.
Rather than move on to the No. 2 developer, the city went back to square one and restarted the selection process from scratch, leaving all developers disgruntled and shaking public confidence in the process and project.
Mayor John Cotugno told Vero Beach 32963 the decision to reset was deliberate. “We didn’t have to redo the RFP,” he said. “But doing so gave us time to reassess the project and make sure proposals aligned with what the community actually asked for.”
Which raises the question of why the city went through a selection process that consumed lots of time and effort for both the city and developers, and picked a developer and a plan, if officials weren’t sure what they wanted.
Market conditions shifted. Financing tightened. And for a time, the project appeared stalled.
Only two developers participated in the second selection process – Clearpath Services and a group called The Blue. In April, the city picked Clearpath even though it lacked sufficient financial backing at the time of the selection. Shortly afterward Madison Marquette, financier for The Blue, threw in with Clearpath and the development group now negotiating with the city was formed.
The city initially expected to negotiate a specific binding deal last fall, but it took time for the new partnership to come together. The deposit check originally due last summer did not materialize until this month.
Despite the delay, the partnership, finalized in late 2025, is attractive to the city, combining Clearpath’s design and development approach with Madison Marquette’s financial and operational capabilities. Cotugno described the shift as typical of large-scale development.
“Teams evolve,” he said. “What mattered was that the final group strengthened the proposal.”
Polk said the term sheet delivered to the developers in February is not a binding plan but a framework that is intentionally incomplete, designed to guide negotiation rather than finalize terms. “It gives them a sense of our thinking,” Polk said. “But the details, the numbers, those are part of the negotiation to come.”
An in-person working session between the city and the development team is expected in the coming days, the first structured engagement since the deposit was received.
From here, the process will move through several stages, including a preliminary business term sheet, a draft development agreement, and ultimately a ground lease governing the long-term use of the site. All are expected to unfold over the next several months.
Once a formal, detailed agreement is signed and sealed, the developer will have to finalize design work and apply for demolition and building permits.
Construction will be phased, with complex new infrastructure going in first. The site is environmentally sensitive and will likely require cleanup along with inspections and permits from Florida Department of Environmental Protection to make sure the project does not harm the Indian River Lagoon.
Both Cotugno and Polk acknowledge their own frustration and the frustration of city residents over the many delays and long timeline.
Polk said part of the delay stemmed from the complexity of merging two development teams into a single partnership, a process that took longer than anticipated on both sides. “I don’t think we realized how much work it would take,” he said.
Cotugno put an optimistic spin on the slow going. “There’s a tendency to want to show progress quickly,” he said. “But rushing into a deal can create problems you live with for decades.”
For residents, the most pressing questions remain simple: When will work start and when will it be done.
In the near term, progress will be measured in additional documents, not dirt.
Negotiations will define the business terms, development responsibilities, and long-term structure of the project. Only after those agreements are finalized will design and permitting move forward. Still, Polk emphasized that the last stages of administrative progress matter, and that early signs of a successful agreement are taking shape.
“We’ve crossed a major hurdle with the city that now puts us in a position to sit down and negotiate the legally binding agreements that will be the foundation for moving the project forward,” said Randy Lloyd, principal and general counsel of Clearpath Services.
“With the deposit submitted and that negotiating process underway, we’re now in the phase where the project can begin to take real shape.”
