BUSINESS
Rapper Vanilla Ice confident PSL housing
industry on road to recovery
When housing construction begins its comeback
in Port St. Lucie, there’s one real estate investor,
house builder and home designer who will be
taking advantage of it — rapper, actor and reality
TV host Vanilla Ice.
Ice, also known by his real name, Rob Van Winkle, owns
several properties in Port St. Lucie and throughout St. Lucie
County, and over the years he has bought and sold many
homes here. He’s holding on to those properties, getting
ready for the next housing wave.
“I’m letting them marinate and waiting for when the values
get up more reasonable,” he said. “St. Lucie will be making a
good comeback.” It’s had a slow recovery in housing construction
Port St. Lucie Magazine 33
from the 2008 bust, he pointed out.
“St. Lucie is a nice, big county with good infrastructure,”
Ice noted. “It has a big master plan and another wind is coming
there.”
Ice was part of the building boom in Port St. Lucie. “There
was rapidly growing St. Lucie West that came out of nowhere.
Then Tradition was growing rapidly, then the bottom
fell out when the brakes kind of hit,” Ice recalled.
“Palm Beach did well during the recession because of all
the money there. St. Lucie was a little bit slower out of the
floodgates to come back like that.”
Ice, who lives in Wellington, moved most of his building
projects in Florida to the Palm Beach area, but he’s keeping
his eye on Port St. Lucie, which he believes will be a “hot
spot” during the next housing boom.
“I research where people move and where they can afford
to move, and other important things for investing,” said Ice,
who frequently drives through the Treasure Coast area.
Building in Palm Beach has been “very good and lavish but
expensive,” he noted, so he foresees an influx to the north,
including Port St. Lucie and other areas in the county, for
more affordable housing. “There’s a lot of potential there in
St. Lucie.” In Port St. Lucie, “there’s a big infrastructure there
to accept the wave of whatever is coming,” he said.
“I do have property (in Port St. Lucie) and can build homes
when everything catches up to itself. I think it’s close to it now.”
While he works on multimillion-dollar estates on the ocean
in Palm Beach, he also works on projects in other areas,
including Brevard and Martin counties. His building efforts
have been featured on his DIY Network television show, The
Vanilla Ice Project, now in its seventh season.
His 1990 single Ice Ice Baby was the first hip-hop song to
reach the top of the Billboard charts. The song includes the
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