NEIGHBORHOODS
GOING ROUND
AND ROUND
Plans to make Floresta a safer
drive moving forward slowly
Steven Cook plays with his kids behind thick hedges
in his backyard. The three youngsters are forbidden
to go out in the front unless a parent has them by the
hand. Their front door is kept securely locked.
Cook, his wife, Christine, and their three children live on
Floresta Drive in Port St. Lucie. For anyone familiar with
Floresta, its speeding cars, missing sidewalks, flooding and
potholes are enough of an explanation for the Cook family’s
refusal to allow their children to go into their front yard.
“We see all kinds of vehicles,” he said. “One time I even
saw an 18-wheeler.”
Floresta will be more than 60 years old, according to county
records, before it gets its first-ever makeover. To put that into
perspective, a parent with a family who moved there at age
30 would now be 90 — and could be pushing 100 before it’s
finished.
FOUR-LANE DRIVE AXED
After a heavily attended meeting on Oct. 30, the city council
rejected four-laning Floresta in favor of keeping it a twolane
road. But there is no funding in sight for the $25 million
project. Still, “we were very, very happy with the outcome of
that meeting,” Cook said about the choice to leave the road at
two lanes. >>
16 Port St. Lucie Magazine
STEVEN COOK
Two cyclists ride on the edge of Floresta Drive, a narrow two-lane road where cars sometimes travel more than 50 miles an hour. Oncoming cars make it
dangerous to swing out into the other lane to avoid the bikes.
BY SUSAN BURGESS