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ST. LUCIE WEST • TRADITION
YourVoiceWeekly.com VOL. 4/ISSUE 22
YOUR INDEPENDENT LOCAL COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 2016
Port St. Lucie is a magnet for millennials Fabio Improta and his wife Susan feed Lana Grace, their 3-month old addition to their new home in Tradition’s Bedford Park community.
Adam Laten Wilson
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ST. LUCIE — Before the market crash, Port St. Lucie was known as the fastest-growing city. Now the city for all ages has earned a new moniker: Number-one city for millennial home buyers. According to a recent survey conducted by Smart Asset that evaluated 200 U.S. cities, PSL comes out on top for millennial homeowners. The study averaged total millennial households with growth of millennial households in the last decade. In PSL, 58 percent of the millennials in the city own their homes, the study found. The obvious reason for this latest trend is the price, says John Falkenhagen with Lang Realty in PGA Village. According to the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches, the median home price in St. Lucie County is $172 K for a single family home, whereas in Palm Beach County it’s $285 K. With Florida’s median price at $199 K and the national price around $189 K, it’s easy to see what’s drawing young home buyers to St. Lucie. For Fabio Improta, a 29 year-old police officer who moved to Tradition 19 months ago, the low cost is only part of the equation. He and his wife instantly fell in love with PSL while visiting a relative, so it was a no-brainer when they decided to pack up and relocate from
Mitch Kloorfain chief photographer Long Island. “When we came to Tradition,” Improta says, “we saw a family-friendly neighborhood with a bunch of people around our age raising kids. We figured not only is it beautiful, but there are also a lot of young people starting families.”
Less than a month ago, Improta and his wife Susan brought a new daughter, Lana Grace, into the world. Their neighborhood is a perfect place for their new addition, Improta says. The
See MILLENIALS page A12
Tradition filmmaker counts Carrie Underwood and the New York Mets among recent gigs Bruno Moore
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TRADITION — He was homeless, penniless and jobless at times. When he did work, it was certainly not what he imagined himself doing. Ever the storyteller, he wrote his first children’s book at age 6 — Tradition resident
and filmmaker James Crocco has been there and seen it all. The New York transplant, who was actually expelled from high school, says his education was less about books and more about experiences. “I was an admittedly poor student in school, more interested in planning elaborate pranks and protesting school policy than studying,”
he said. After his expulsion, Crocco did odd jobs and wandered the Hudson Valley before finding a knack for photography. That soon turned into a side job and filled the fridge for several years before his equipment, his clothes and everything else he owned burned to ash in an
See FILMMAKER page A11
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