Model Republican
High school teen makes her mark
A3
Tropical chicken’ s coming Pollo Tropical to open in SLW
A4
Staged chocolate factory Wonka coming to IRSC
B1
ST. LUCIE WEST • TRADITION
YourVoiceWeekly.com VOL. 3/ISSUE 29
YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2015
Gas outage recovery continues Tammy Raits
MANAGING EDITOR
traits@YourVoiceWeekly.com
PORT ST. LUCIE — Debbie Beutel, owner of The Tin Fish Restaurant on Port St. Lucie Boulevard, is still not as happy a camper as she could be. Following Port St. Lucie’s oncein-its 54-year-old history disaster of last week – the loss of a main natural gas connection for several days that affected the lives and businesses of 6,000 customers, she is still thinking about the loss of revenue. She estimates she lost thousands of dollars from a Mother’s Day holiday weekend that didn’t happen for them and numerous other restaurants this year – as well as loss of rent, loss of food and loss of wages and tips for the staff. One hundred ten seats she expected to turn over three times on Sunday. Instead, they found themselves turning customers away and tossing perishable
See GAS page A8
Mitch Kloorfain/chief photographer Dan Brogan, co-chair of the emergency response team at Lake Forest in St. Lucie West, goes over the calls that had come in with Jim Syracuse, Community Emergency Response Team co-chair, during a mock emergency drill at Lake Forest in St. Lucie West Saturday, May 16. The faux gas emergency was planned before the actual one that took place two weeks ago in Port St. Lucie.
PSL real estate ranked high FOR YOUR VOICE NEWS & VIEWS
PORT ST. LUCIE — When Port St. Lucie resident Chet Rubackin read an article in Money Magazine that Port St. Lucie has one of the hottest real estate markets in the nation, he wasn’t surprised, he recalled in a recent interview. PRSRT STD US POSTAGE PAID FORT PIERCE, FL PERMIT NO. 248 ECRWSS
Local Postal Customer
Considering that demand plays a role in prices, Rubackin said, he believes that will increase because of the qualities of the city that led him to move to Port St. Lucie from South Florida. The city is great “for someone looking for a lot of the benefits of Florida without the disadvantages,” Rubackin said. Money Magazine ranked Port St. Lucie fourth in the nation in
terms of hot real estate markets with growing home values. Selling prices are expected to increase 14 percent — the national average was about 5 percent — during 2015, helping to reverse a slump in the market that led to the city dealing with foreclosures. Other cities ranked by Money Magazine with hot markets and the expected selling price in-
creases include: 1. Miami, 15.4 percent; 2. San Jose, Calif., 14.6 percent; 3. Delray Beach, 14.5 percent; 5. Cape Coral, 13.6 percent; 6. Los Angeles, 13.5 percent; 7. Fresno, Calif., 12.6 percent; 8. San Francisco, 12.4 percent; 9. Fort Lauderdale, 12.2 percent and Oakland, Calif., 12 percent.
See RANKING page A14 18984
Jay Meisel