PORT ST. LUCIE PEOPLE
The ARCHITECT
During high school, Lauren Moss Clark
had one thing on her mind: surfing. She
had no intention of going to college, but
her academically minded parents had
other plans. They made sure she showed up for
classes, and thank goodness, because her high
school in Ponte Vedra Beach required students
to participate in a program for environmental
and architectural design. Eighteen years later, the
well-respected architect attributes that program
as the inspiration for her career, even if she did
not realize it at the time. “I learned how to draft
then,” says Moss Clark. “It planted the seed.”
Today, Moss Clark is an independent contractor,
working almost exclusively for the Treasure
Coast Regional Planning Council based in Stuart,
where she most recently worked on an Arts Village
project for downtown Vero Beach. “I loved
that project. We got to do a lot of drawing, instead
of just number crunching, like some other
projects,” she says.
Moss Clark earned her master’s degree from
the University of Miami and wrote her thesis on
the adaptive reuse and historical preservation of
the old Ford plant in Jacksonville. That gave her
statewide recognition, and she was invited to
speak at the DOCOMOMO (DOcumentation and
COnservation of buildings, sites and neighborhoods
of the MOdern Movement) symposium in
that city in 2008.
After graduation in 2009, she stayed on in the
city she had grown to love and freelanced for
a number of companies, working on high-end
residential homes, resorts in the Caribbean and
historic properties. “I loved it all, but the historic
buildings were my favorite,” says Moss Clark.
A hard worker, she always made time for her
first love, surfing, and that’s where she met her
husband, Robert. “I was surfing and he came
down to the beach. He started flirting,” she says
with a laugh. Robert also loved surfing so it did
not take long for the romance to blossom.
As the couple started to think about their futures,
they envisioned settling down somewhere
a bit calmer than Miami. “It took me a half hour
to drive seven miles,” says Moss Clark.
Meanwhile, Robert, a craftsman, had always
dreamed of opening up a high-end pizza restaurant,
something he was very familiar with as he
had helped build two for friends in Vermont and
New York from the ground up. He also learned
how to make the “best pizzas” from scratch.
The couple did some research and found a
Port St. Lucie restaurateur who was retiring,
so they took the plunge. Fortunately, the basic
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Port St. Lucie Magazine
SIOBHAN FITZPATRICK AUSTIN
Lauren Moss Clark’s strong architectural background makes her a valued member of the Treasure
Coast Planning Council.
BY SIOBHAN FITZPATRICK AUSTIN