Three Corners Redevelopment in Vero Beach, Florida

Three Corners is the City of Vero Beach plan to turn its own lagoon waterfront at the foot of the Alma Lee Loy Bridge into a public destination.

The City of Vero Beach calls the site the 38-acre waterfront parcel known as Three Corners located at the base of the 17th Street (Alma Lee Loy) bridge, says it is considered the most valuable city (publicly) owned waterfront property on Florida's East Coast, and ranks its future use second in importance only to the sale of the municipal power plant.

The Vero Beach project is a lease, not a sale. The city's request for proposals describes a master development agreement under which the land is leased or subleased to a developer and operator through a long-term ground lease with the city, and the developer is responsible for every element of the north parcel, including the retail and restaurants. The ideal project, in the city's words, is a hotel, a waterfront village with retail, restaurants, plazas, music venues and recreation, public open space and a marina. The city also says it wants programs and facilities that are self-sustaining economically and that generate revenue for constant improvements.

The core of Three Corners is the former Vero Beach power plant site on the north side of the 17th Street bridge.

The charter language the city quotes fixes its boundary in plain terms: north of the Alma Lee Loy (17th Street) Bridge, west of the Indian River and east of Indian River Boulevard. The 2023 solicitation was aimed at that piece, which the city calls the north corner of the Three Corners parcel.

The site is protected land. The city's referendum fact sheet lists it as one of 26 parks, recreation facilities, open space lands and public facilities named in Section 5.05 of the City Charter, a list that also includes the city wastewater treatment plant, Riverside Park, Pocahontas Park, Humiston Beach Park, Royal Palm Pointe Park, the Municipal Marina and Crestlawn Cemetery. Any sale, lease, trade or gift of a listed property has to be approved by Vero Beach voters by referendum, which is why the power plant tract needed an election before any developer could be chosen.

South of the bridge is the side the city still uses for sewage treatment. The Three Corners Master Concept page describes the Youth Sailing Foundation lease as being for sailing facilities on the wastewater plant site, so the first new building at Three Corners is going up there rather than on the power plant land.

The Vero Beach planning record for Three Corners runs from a late 2019 kickoff to zoning votes in 2024 and 2025.

According to the city's project timeline, DPZ CoDesign presented its process to the Vero Beach City Council on November 19, 2019, the same day the SpeakUpVeroBeach.com platform launched. Public power plant tours were held on January 18 and January 25, and a charrette week of public workshops ran January 27 to 31, 2020, held at the Vero Beach Community Center. DPZ drew five scenarios, ranging from mothballing the site to cultural and recreational use to maximum development.

Adoption took two more years. The timeline shows the plan was not adopted at council reviews on July 21, 2020 and August 18, 2020; between them, DPZ prepared a post-pandemic version with more green space and more outdoor dining. The council finally adopted the Three Corners Master Concept Plan on February 1, 2022 by Resolution 2022-03. Because the power plant tract is one of the 26 properties protected by Section 5.05 of the City Charter, voters then had to agree to commercial leasing, which they did with 79 percent support on November 8, 2022.

Studies and zoning followed. The city hired a traffic engineering firm to study the effect on roadway levels of service and Stantec to analyze environmental impacts and consistency with the Comprehensive Plan. The Three Corners Master Concept page records that on February 27, 2024 the council adopted Ordinance 2024-03, writing the master concept into the Vero Beach Comprehensive Plan, and that on August 12, 2025 it adopted Ordinance 2025-08, creating the Three Corners Waterfront District in Chapter 62, Article VIII of the land development regulations. Those two votes set the rules any developer must build under.

Picking a Three Corners developer took Vero Beach two rounds of proposals.

The city issued its first request for proposals on August 15, 2023. Its page lists responses received on February 1, 2024 from Clearpath of Bloomington, Indiana; Edgewater Group of Fort Lauderdale; Suda with a Miami capital partner; Madison Marquette of Washington, D.C.; and Vista Blue Vero Beach Resort and Spa of Vero Beach, while the same page says the RFP received four responses. A seven-member selection committee of staff and citizen board members ranked the proposals on April 26 and May 17, 2024. At a May 21, 2024 meeting, concerns were raised about the disqualification of the SUDA proposal, and the City Council ultimately withdrew the RFP and reissued it.

Only two teams answered the second call, issued August 15, 2024, by December 17, 2024: Clearpath Services of Bloomington, Indiana, and The Blue at Vero Beach, LLC, of Vero Beach. An evaluation committee of two city staff and three advisory board members, with PFM Financial Advisors and Stantec reviewing costs and financing, ranked them in public meetings on March 4 and March 31, 2025. On April 22, 2025 the Vero Beach City Council selected Clearpath as preferred developer, and on May 6, 2025 the city gave it 90 days to document its financial capacity.

The team then changed shape. According to the city, Clearpath added Madison Marquette and other team members to create a new master development entity, and the City Council directed the City Manager and City Attorney, or their designees, to negotiate a master development agreement with that entity and place it on a later council agenda for approval.

Any Three Corners deal has to fit the charter wording Vero Beach voters approved in 2022.

Subsection (c) of Section 5.05, as the fact sheet sets it out, says the power plant site shall be developed consistent with the Master Concept Plan, must maintain public access to the waterfront, passive and active recreational space and pedestrian promenades, and may be leased for restaurant, retail, hotel or similar commercial uses with parking facilities.

The same Vero Beach charter text limits who the site can serve. Development may be through long-term leases or a public-private partnership and must be primarily for public use and access; all uses must be open to the public and may not include private clubs or facilities. The referendum question summarized that language in 75 words, and the city noted at the time that the subsection would govern the City Council on any proposed lease or partnership on the former power plant site.

The selection rules point the same way. The evaluation committee for the reissued solicitation judged proposals on criteria such as conformance to the master concept plan and firm financial capacity, the city says. As of October 15, 2026, the city's Three Corners page still describes the master development agreement as under negotiation and does not post a signed agreement.

The first new building on Three Corners land belongs to a nonprofit, the Youth Sailing Foundation, not to the master developer.

On August 8, 2023 the Vero Beach City Council approved a lease agreement with the Youth Sailing Foundation for sailing facilities on the wastewater plant site, according to the city.

The foundation describes the plan on its own sailing center page: a two-story 10,000 square foot sailing center, an outdoor classroom and recreational pavilion, picnic pavilions, 250 feet of floating docks for small craft and dinghy launch ramps, with public access, junior, adult and adaptive sailing programs, boat rentals, paddle sports and 400 feet of waterfront views of the Indian River. It also notes a north side fishing pier from the city master plan. The foundation lists its address as 17 17th Street, Vero Beach.

The Youth Sailing Foundation of Indian River County is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2009 that now operates as YSF Community Sailing and offers lessons and member sailing on the Indian River Lagoon. Last verified: October 15, 2026, against four City of Vero Beach Three Corners pages and two Youth Sailing Foundation pages.