Interior designer in Port St. Lucie, Florida

Outside its master-planned districts, much of Port St. Lucie is the grid General Development laid out for low-density single-family homes, which is why, as the city's own comprehensive plan notes, there is no traditional downtown. Neighborhoods on that grid, such as Sandpiper Bay, filled in over the following decades, and the North Fork of the St. Lucie River and a web of canals wind through them.

These houses reward a clear plan. We rework closed kitchens and dated baths, open living areas where the structure allows, and choose finishes and lighting that make a modest footprint feel generous. Walls, windows, plumbing and electrical are licensed contractor work permitted through the City of Port St. Lucie; we produce the design documents and coordinate the contractor through project direction.

• Kitchen redesign with new cabinetry, counters and lighting
• Open-plan living and dining where walls can come out
• Bath remodels and primary suite updates
• Built-in storage and home offices in spare bedrooms

Tradition, now developed by Mattamy Homes, is part of an 8,200-acre area that includes Southern Grove, a former citrus grove the city plans as its jobs corridor, with the Cleveland Clinic Tradition Hospital in its Tradition Center for Innovation. GL Homes is building Riverland, a 4,000-acre community whose Valencia neighborhoods are for buyers 55 and older, and Kolter Homes builds at PGA Village Verano.

Builder packages can be well specified: GL Homes lists quartz countertops and impact-resistant windows and doors among standard features at Valencia at Riverland. What a package cannot do is make the house yours. We review option selections against a whole-house design, then add what the package leaves out, from lighting plans and custom millwork to furniture sized to the rooms and window treatments, shown first as 3D renderings.

A Port St. Lucie mailing address does not always mean city jurisdiction. PGA Village, the gated golf community off Reserve Boulevard, has Port St. Lucie addresses but sits in unincorporated St. Lucie County, unlike neighboring Verano, which is inside the city. River Park and Indian River Estates are unincorporated too, so building permits in all three come from the county's Building and Code Regulation Division. River Park, platted in 1953 along the North Fork, was left out by design when the city was chartered.

Associations add their own review. PGA Village has a master property owners' association with a Master Architectural Review Committee over 35 sub-associations, and Tradition has its own community association. We prepare the drawings, finish boards and renderings an association asks for, and our project direction service keeps its timeline aligned with the contractor's schedule.

Port St. Lucie's business districts are spread out: the US 1 corridor and City Center in the east, St. Lucie West around Clover Park, the New York Mets' spring training home, and Tradition's town center and the Southern Grove medical and research campus in the west. We design offices, medical suites, restaurants and retail for these districts, with test-fits, 3D renderings for landlord approval and design direction through the build-out. For builders and sales teams we also design model units, and our branding service handles identity and signage when a business needs both.