Event production in Fort Pierce
where the code regulates the low end by name

Fort Pierce keeps its sound standard in Chapter 26, Offenses and Miscellaneous Provisions, and section 26-40 states the rule in one sentence. No person shall cause, suffer, allow, or permit the operation of any sound source in such a manner as to create a sound level that exceeds the sound level limits set forth in Table 1 when measured from the real property line of the nearest receiving property, using the slow response setting unless otherwise noted. A source that does constitutes a noise disturbance.

Table 1 has three limit columns, not one. Every cell carries a dBA figure, a dBC figure and a dBZ figure — and in every cell the three are the same number:

Residential, Monday through Saturday, 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.: 60 dBA, 60 dBC, 60 dBZ. Commercial, at all times: 65 / 65 / 65. Industrial, at all times: 70 / 70 / 70. The residential overnight period and the Sunday morning period are not given figures at all; they are sent to a separate subsection, which section 03 deals with.

The third column is the finding, and it is worth being exact about why. Z-weighting is no weighting at all. The A curve takes more than twenty decibels off at 63 Hertz; the C curve takes a few; the Z curve takes none, so a dBZ reading counts a forty-cycle fundamental at its true level and sets it beside a vocal without apology. Several cities on this site legislate the A and C curves together — Hollywood holds both to a single figure, and Port St. Lucie, twenty minutes down the road in the same county, grants the C curve five decibels of headroom over the A curve in every cell. Fort Pierce is the first municipality on this site to legislate the unweighted scale, and it sets it equal to the A-weighted one.

That combination removes the design margin that every other noise table on this site leaves somewhere. Where a code names only dBA, a subwoofer array is measured through a filter that is already forgiving it. Where a code names dBC five decibels higher, there is at least a stated allowance for the difference between the two readings of the same programme. Here there is neither. A programme with any real low-frequency content will reach the dBZ ceiling first, while the dBA figure still has room in it, and the dBZ ceiling is the same sixty decibels at a residential line.

Two more mechanics in the same section change how a show is engineered against that table. Measurements are taken on the slow response setting by default — but subsection (2) states that if the noise is an impulsive sound, the fast response setting shall be used and the daytime limits of Table 1 shall be increased by ten dBA, dBC or dBZ. Ten decibels is a large grant, and it attaches to the transient rather than to the programme, so it is the snare and not the sustain that collects it.

The second mechanic is an absence. Nowhere in the article is there an averaging window, a percentile or a minimum measurement duration, and the article was read end to end looking for one. That is a real distinction from most of the codes on this site, which all supply some apparatus for turning a reading into a finding: Coral Springs works on a median level exceeded for more than half of a period of not less than ten minutes, Boynton Beach publishes a statistical percentile table, and Wellington allows a limit to be exceeded for a tenth of a window. Fort Pierce supplies none of that. Sixty decibels is a figure the reading may not touch rather than one the show may not average, which means the design has to hold at the peak and not across the set.

After the table and its four qualifying subsections, section 26-40 adds a fifth that is not a limit on a sound level at all. It is a limit on part of the spectrum:

In addition to the limits of Table 1, for any sound source which impacts residential property, the maximum allowable sound level limits for the individual octave bands whose centers are 31.5, 63 and 125 Hertz shall not exceed 65 dBA, dBC, or dBZ.

Read what that does. The three named bands are, between them, the entire operating range of a subwoofer and the bottom octave of a main array. The clause applies in addition to Table 1, so it is not an alternative test that a compliant overall level satisfies — a show can sit inside sixty decibels broadband at the receiving line and still be in breach because one band of it is over. And the trigger is not the zoning of the site: it is any sound source which impacts residential property, which reaches a commercial or industrial parcel the moment houses are within range.

One other city on this site legislates by octave band, and the two are worth putting side by side because the bands they choose say different things about what each city is trying to stop. Coral Springs names four unweighted bands — 63, 125, 250 and 500 Hertz — each held to 65, for sound reaching residential, public space or institutional property. Fort Pierce names three, and the one it adds is an octave lower: 31.5 Hertz. Where Coral Springs reaches upward into the low mids and catches the bottom of a vocal range, Fort Pierce stops at 125 and extends down to the band almost nothing but a subwoofer occupies.

The trigger differs too, and then stops differing. Coral Springs names residential, public space and institutional property; Fort Pierce names residential alone — but section 04 is the reason that is not the relief it appears to be, because this city's own classification rules put hospitals, nursing homes, schools, libraries, churches and all institutional uses into the residential category. The two cities arrive at nearly the same coverage by different routes.

A band limit is a different instrument from a broadband one. It is read on a real-time analyser rather than a meter, it is attributable to a specific part of the rig, and it cannot be satisfied by pulling the master down if the imbalance is in the array rather than in the gain.

What it means on a Fort Pierce plot is that the low end has to be controlled directionally rather than by level. Cardioid and end-fire subwoofer arrangements, which cancel rearward and sideways energy rather than reducing it everywhere, are the only approach that lowers the figure at a neighbouring property line without taking the same decibels off the audience. Distributing the low end across the width of the site rather than stacking it in one place does the same thing for a different reason. Both are decisions about what goes on the truck and how long the build takes, taken at the design stage — not adjustments available to an engineer at a console on the day.

The residential row of Table 1 has three time periods and only one of them is given numbers. Monday through Saturday, 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. is 60 / 60 / 60. The residential overnight period, 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., and the residential period of Sunday, 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., both read: see subsection (1) of this section.

Subsection (1) is not a quieter row. It is a different kind of rule:

It shall be unlawful for any person to make, continue or cause to be made or continued within that portion of the city which has been designated as a residential or mixed use area, between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. of each day, and on Sunday from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., any unreasonably loud, excessive, unnecessary, or unusual noise in such manner that noise produced, or the vibration made, would be obvious, or cause discomfort and annoyance to an ordinary, reasonable prudent person at a distance greater than 50 feet from the real property line of the nearest receiving property. A sound level meter or sound level reading shall not be necessary for the enforcement of this subsection.

So the residential overnight period and the first six hours of Sunday are governed by a standard with no number in it, judged by an ordinary reasonable person at more than fifty feet from the receiving line, and explicitly without a meter. The thing it names alongside noise is the vibration made, which for a music event is again the low end.

Both halves of the Treasure Coast handle Sunday, and they handle it differently, which is worth setting side by side because the two cities are a half-hour apart. Port St. Lucie applies its numbered overnight column to the whole of Sunday and to every public holiday, so a Sunday show there is measurable and measured, just against harder figures. Fort Pierce applies no numbers at all to Sunday morning and substitutes a judgement. A Sunday matinee that starts before one o'clock on residential-receiving ground in Fort Pierce is not defended by a meter reading, because the enforcing standard does not use one. A one-thirty downbeat is in a different legal regime from a twelve-thirty one.

The fifty-foot distance is itself a familiar device — Stuart measures at fifty feet on public ground — but the two are not doing the same work. Stuart's fifty feet is where a meter goes. Fort Pierce's fifty feet is where an ordinary person must not be annoyed, and the code says in terms that nothing needs to be measured to establish it.

Table 1 sets limits by receiving category, which means the whole table depends on how a parcel gets its category. Fort Pierce does not leave that to the zoning map. Section 26-39 is a short set of classification rules, and three of them decide outdoor sites:

All premises containing habitually occupied sleeping quarters shall be considered residential use — and premises containing transient commercial sleeping quarters are commercial, which separates a hotel from an apartment block in a single clause. In cases of multiple use, the more restrictive use category shall prevail. And the one that moves most plans: hospitals, nursing homes, schools, libraries, churches and all institutional uses shall be considered residential uses.

That last sentence is the sharp edge. A festival on a school field, a concert on a church lawn, a civic event on a library plaza, an outdoor gathering at a campus — each of those is, in the eyes of this chapter, a residential job, held to sixty decibels across all three weightings by day and to the no-meter standard after eleven. Institutional ground is not a quiet commercial site in Fort Pierce. It is housing.

The rule closes with a default that cuts the other way: any area not otherwise classified shall conform to commercial standards. Vacant or unclassified ground is commercial, not residential. A producer looking at a lot with nothing on it gets the commercial limit, provided nothing residential or institutional is close enough to be the nearest receiving property.

Setting the limit by the category of the property receiving the sound is not itself unusual; Boynton Beach, Coral Springs, Davie and Port St. Lucie all do a version of it. What is particular to Fort Pierce is that the code writes its own classification rules rather than deferring to the zoning code, and that those rules sweep an entire class of institutional land into the residential column.

Subsections (3) and (4) set limits that are not measured at a property line at all, which is a device this site has met once before and not in this form.

In a multifamily dwelling it is unlawful to create noise exceeding 50 dBA, dBC or dBZ by day and 40 at night, as measured from a neighbour's dwelling. In a mixed use building the figures are 55 by day and 45 at night, measured within the residential use portion of the building.

Fifty decibels by day is ten below the residential line limit, and forty at night is low enough that normal conversation at a few feet will approach it. The measurement point is inside the complaining party's home, which removes the usual defence that a wall or a distance was doing work.

For event production this governs two real situations. The first is an indoor event in a mixed-use building — a ground-floor venue, a converted downtown space, a function room beneath apartments — where the binding figure is forty-five after eleven, taken in the flat upstairs. The second is any outdoor site whose nearest receiving property is a multifamily block, because the building limit is written as a separate prohibition and does not depend on where the noise came from.

Three cities on this site reach inside a building and each takes a different route. Port St. Lucie moves the line indoors, defining a real property line to include intrabuilding divisions, and then applies its ordinary table to it. Coral Springs keeps its line outside and writes a relative indoor rule, taking ten decibels off its own limits when the measurement is made in a neighbour's unit. Fort Pierce writes absolute figures instead of a deduction, and it is the only one of the three that writes a separate category for a mixed use building. Its forty decibels at night inside a neighbouring flat is the lowest indoor figure on this site, and unlike a deduction it does not move if the outdoor table is ever amended.

Section 26-41 lists the exemptions, and they are the usual shape: safety signals and warning devices; authorised emergency vehicles; emergency work; aircraft other than scale models; motor vehicles as governed by state statute; a long named list of electrical, gas, rail, water and sewage facilities existing and in operation on the effective date of the ordinance; air conditioners operating to the manufacturer's specification with standard mufflers in place, and lawn mowers and agricultural equipment during daylight hours.

Then one exemption is written for events, and it is written carefully:

Non-amplified crowd noises resulting from the activities such as those planned by student, governmental or community groups.

The crowd at a school event, a city event or a community festival is exempt. The public address system is not. The drafters put the word non-amplified in the clause that would otherwise have covered the whole occasion, which means the one category of sound an event brings with it is deliberately left inside the table.

Section 26-43 then overrides the entire framework from above. It prohibits sounds that are excessive, unnatural, prolonged, unusual and a detriment to the public health, comfort, convenience, safety, welfare and prosperity of the residents of the city as deemed by a reasonable person, and the two subsections that follow are the ones to read twice. Noises prohibited by this section are unlawful notwithstanding the fact that no violation of this article is involved and notwithstanding the fact that the activity complained about is exempted in this article. And: a sound level meter or sound level reading shall not be necessary for the enforcement of this section.

So an exemption from Table 1 is not an exemption from Chapter 26. Compliance with every figure in the table is not a defence under 26-43, which is judged by a reasonable person and needs no instrument. That is the second place in this chapter where the city has written a meterless standard alongside a measured one, and it is the one that applies at all hours, in every district, to exempt and non-exempt activities alike.

Relief from the noise levels is applied for on the basis of undue hardship, to the city manager or his designated appointee. Any permit granted must be in writing, must contain all conditions upon which it was granted, and must specify a reasonable time that the permit shall be effective. The conditions the city manager may impose are open-ended and the code gives examples that reach the equipment: mufflers, screens or other sound-attenuating devices.

Then subsection (2) does something unusual. Under the heading Permits for entertainment, it says: special event permits are covered under chapter 28, article IV, and permits for noise generated by and related to public events held on public property may be obtained as provided for in chapter 28, article IV.

The noise chapter has handed entertainment back to the parks chapter. In Fort Pierce the special event permit is the noise instrument for a public event on public property — there is no separate application to make, no second office to visit, and no second queue.

That is worth stating flatly against the city thirteen miles south, because the two neighbours have taken opposite decisions. In Port St. Lucie the noise chapter exempts no event of any kind, and relief is a distinct written application to the chief of police which the special event permit does not supply; a producer there has three instruments in three offices. In Fort Pierce the noise chapter points at the event permit and stops. One application covers both, and the consequence is that the sound plan has to be right inside the special event application rather than negotiated afterwards in a separate one — which, as section 09 shows, is exactly what the application form asks for.

The rest of 26-42 covers everything that is not entertainment, and it carries a limit worth knowing: a special permit for a non-entertainment special purpose requires that the purpose not be in the ordinary course of the applicant's trade or business, that it be absolutely necessary to it, and that if it is a recurring purpose, it not recur more often than four times each calendar year.

Fort Pierce keeps its event rules in Chapter 28, Parks, Recreation and Special Events — a chapter whose title puts the two in the same breath, which is itself a tell about where the city thinks events happen. The definition is the lowest threshold on this site:

Special event means any outdoor meeting, activity, parade, gathering or group of two or more persons, animals or vehicles, or a combination thereof having a common purpose, design or goal, upon any public street, sidewalk, alley, park, beach or other public property, place or building, which special event substantially inhibits the usual flow of pedestrian or vehicular travel or which occupies any outdoor area of any public area or building which results in use preempting normal use otherwise to be made of the area by the general public or which deviates from the established use. A funeral procession is excluded by name.

Two or more persons, animals or vehicles. The qualifiers that follow do real work — the gathering must inhibit travel, preempt normal public use, or deviate from the established use — and those qualifiers are not Fort Pierce's own. Miramar and Coral Springs both run the same model sentence, down to having a common purpose, design or goal and substantially inhibits the usual flow of pedestrian or vehicular traffic. What each city changes is the number it drops into the model, and that is where they part company completely: Miramar's version reads fifty or more persons. Fort Pierce's reads two. Stuart triggers at twenty-five and Port St. Lucie abandons headcount for a use test. Two is the lowest threshold on this site by a factor of twelve.

The city's own Special Events page states the definition in its shorter form, without the qualifiers — any outdoor meeting, activity, parade, gathering or group of 2 or more persons, animals, or vehicles having a common purpose, design, or goal, upon any public street, park, or other public property — and that is the version a first-time applicant will read.

Section 28-78 vests the permit: no person shall engage in, participate in or commence any special event unless a special event permit shall have been obtained from the city manager. In practice the desk is elsewhere — the city publishes that special event permits are issued by the River Walk Center, its riverfront recreation building at 600 N. Indian River Drive, with the Public Works Department offering event equipment separately. A leisure services facility is the filing address for every outdoor event in the city. That is the first time on this site that the counter is neither a clerk, a police department, a building department nor a zoning office.

And the chapter reaches further down than any other here. Section 28-32 states that renting a pavilion, picnic tables or other park facilities shall require a special event permit and supplemental facilities rental permit. A picnic pavilion booking in Fort Pierce is a special event with a permit behind it. For a production that means there is no informal tier to work in — every outdoor use of public ground, from a company barbecue to a street festival, enters the same process at the same door.

The filing window is a band with a hard floor and a hard ceiling. For a single, non-recurring special event the application shall be filed not more than 180 days before, and not less than 60 calendar days before, the date and time at which it is proposed to commence the assembly, and it shall be signed by the applicant under oath.

Sixty calendar days is the longest minimum lead time of any city on this site — twice Port St. Lucie's thirty-day street closure floor, and it applies to the event permit itself rather than to a supplemental one. A date agreed with an artist eight weeks out is already outside the window. And the hundred and eighty day ceiling is the matching constraint at the other end: the permit cannot be filed earlier than six months ahead, so an annual event cannot hold its slot by filing in advance.

Recurring events are handled by a separate rule that compresses the planning further. An application for a recurring event at the same location covering all such assemblies in one-month intervals during that calendar year is filed not more than 180 and not less than 60 days before the first assembly — and the city's own page states the consequence plainly: recurring event permits will not be issued for more than a 60-day (monthly) period. A weekly series therefore lives on a rolling permit whose renewal clock and whose minimum filing lead are both measured in the same sixty days.

Then the application content, in subsection (d). Alongside the ordinary items — purpose, responsible person, date, hours, location, estimated attendance, vehicle numbers, toilet provision, what portion of the street will be occupied, cleanup, security and traffic control, food and drink — are two that are not ordinary at all.

The first: the applicant shall produce valid government issued identification, and give a date of birth. The permit is personal before it is organisational.

The second is the sentence this whole page has been walking toward: the application must state whether any music will be provided, the hours of duration and location of such bands or loudspeakers, along with the numbers and types of such amplifiers or other such devices.

That is a sound system declared on a municipal form, months before the show, by count and by type, with the loudspeaker positions and the hours they run. No other city on this site asks for it. Port St. Lucie gets to the equipment eventually — its chief of police may write an equipment limitation into a noise permit — but that is a condition imposed after an application, not a disclosure required to make one.

Section 28-80 is a mandatory-issuance section: the city manager shall issue the permit when the listed conditions appear to be met. The conditions are the usual traffic, sanitation and parking tests — and then three in a row about policing.

The sixth asks that no assembly permit application for the same time and location has been received which has been or will be granted. The seventh extends that to a different location at the same time, where the police resources required for that prior public assembly are so great that in combination with the subsequent proposed application, the resulting deployment of police services would have an immediate and adverse effect upon the welfare and safety of persons and property. The eighth reaches wider still: no event is scheduled elsewhere in the city whose police requirement would have the same effect.

In a city this size that is a real scheduling constraint rather than a formality. A permitted event anywhere in Fort Pierce on the same date can be the stated reason a second one is refused, and the applicant has no way to see the queue. It is an argument for filing early inside the window rather than at the sixty-day floor, since the seventh standard turns on which application was received first.

Section 28-81 then sets how much policing an event needs, on the size, location, duration, time and date of the event, the expected sale or service of alcoholic beverages, the number of streets and intersections to be blocked and the need to detour or preempt ordinary citizen travel. That list is model language and Coral Gables runs the identical one a hundred and twenty miles south — but the two cities give it to different offices. In Coral Gables the chief of police decides. In Fort Pierce the city manager does, which puts the policing decision, the permit itself, the alcohol approval and any noise relief in one person's hands. Two further sentences matter. The content of the speech or event will not be a factor in determining the amount of police protection necessary — a content-neutrality clause written into the operative standard. And if possible without disruption of ordinary police services or compromise to public safety, the event will be policed by regularly scheduled on-duty personnel, with additional protection at the applicant's expense only where the city manager deems it necessary.

The permit itself then has to travel with the show. Section 28-84 requires the organiser to carry the permit upon their person during the conduct of the assembly and display it upon demand by any employee of the city authorized to enforce this article. Not posted at the production office — carried.

The city's own parks page states the baseline: city parks are open from sunrise to sunset unless otherwise posted. Section 28-30 states the exception: all public parks shall be closed during posted hours except for properly permitted special events.

Put together, those two sentences say that in Fort Pierce an evening in a city park is not a booking with a noise question attached. The park is shut, and the special event permit is the instrument that opens it. Every outdoor show that runs past dusk on city ground — which is to say every outdoor show — depends on that permit for its existence, not merely for its paperwork. There is no version of the plan in which the permit is skipped and the event is quieter instead.

Which is also the practical reason the sixty-day floor in section 09 bites so hard. In cities where a park closes at eleven, or at a posted time, a short-lead booking is still a legal event with a curfew. Here it is a trespass after sunset without the permit, and section 28-31 makes trespassing in a park at times when it is closed an offence in its own right.

The booking mechanics are equally physical. The River Walk Center takes pavilion reservations on a first-come, first-served basis, and reservations must be made in person at the River Walk Center at 600 N. Indian River Drive. Not online, not by telephone — in person, at a building on the waterfront, during its published office hours. For a producer working a Treasure Coast date from elsewhere, that is a journey on the critical path, and it is the kind of requirement that does not appear in any permit checklist.

Chapter 28 ends with four supplemental permits, each requiring its own application made as provided in the article: alcoholic beverage sales or consumption at a special event; tents at special events; street closings at special events; and park facilities rental. A street festival with a bar and a marquee on park ground is therefore five applications in one chapter, all through the same door.

The tent permit is the one with a production requirement in it. A supplemental permit is required to erect any tent or canopy requiring a permit under the building code or the Florida Fire Prevention Code, and a sketch of the property showing the location of the tent, together with a certificate of flame resistance, must be submitted with the application. The certificate is a document that travels with the fabric and has to be requested from the supplier in time to be filed, not produced on the day.

Street closings split by ownership of the road. For city streets the city publishes the requirements as a completed special event permit, a liability certificate, a survey of the affected businesses and homes, and a map of the roads to be closed including a detour route. That survey is the unusual item: consent of the neighbours is collected by the applicant and filed, rather than tested by the city after the fact. For state roads the application is the Florida Department of Transportation's own Request for Road Closure, filed with the same survey and map. Several cities here hand a road back to the state before they will close it — Jupiter, Sunrise and Deerfield Beach each deal with that in their own way. What Fort Pierce adds is the door-to-door survey, required on the city route and the state route alike.

Alcohol in a park or on a right-of-way needs a permit of its own and City Manager approval is required in every variant the city lists. Where the permit covers sales as well as consumption, the city states that Fort Pierce police officers are required at the applicant's expense, evidenced by a Special Event Police Hire Form from the police department, on top of the state temporary alcohol permit. Fireworks displays are a further application again, carrying a diagram of the pyrotechnics site and setup and a copy of the pyrotechnic company's state licence.

And then the exemption that tells you what the city is really regulating. Section 28-92 allows the city manager to waive fees, application time limitations and insurance for a neighbourhood block party, on seven conditions. The event must be closed to the general public; no commercial activity; no admission charged; no alcohol; the street must be classified as a local street by the city engineer; the application must be filed not less than ten days ahead — and no sound-amplification equipment or devices are to be used.

The waiver that collapses the sixty-day window to ten days is available only to an event with no PA. The moment a speaker on a stand appears, a block party is a full special event on the full timetable, and the fastest route through this city's process is explicitly closed to anything amplified. A separate waiver in section 28-94 covers events held for the sole purpose of exercising rights to free public speech, where the city manager may reduce fees, time limitations, insurance and police expense — and that one carries no equipment condition at all.

The Sunrise Theatre opened in 1923, the city owns and runs it, and it publishes a full technical specifications packet through the city's own document centre. That packet is the most complete venue document this programme has read in a Florida city of this size, and almost every figure a production needs is in it.

The house. Auditorium capacity is 1,230 including orchestra pit seating — 791 orchestra seats and 409 in the balcony. The stage sits 3 feet 3 inches above the audience floor. The theatre separately publishes four rentable spaces for private events: the main stage at a maximum of 1,200 people, a Black Box at 200 classroom or 120 on rounds, a main lobby at 30 for cocktails, and a second-floor historic bar and deck at 90.

The stage. Proscenium opening 38 feet 2 inches wide by 25 feet high. Stage floor area 38 feet by 30 feet 8 inches, plaster to back wall, with an apron 18 inches deep across 40 feet. The floor is one and a half inch plywood with a tempered quarter-inch masonite top, painted flat black. And the figure that shapes every scenic and audio decision in the building: wing space is 4 feet 2 inches stage right and 8 feet stage left. The receiving area behind the backstage wall can be used as additional wing space at 57 feet by 18 feet, but the wings themselves are narrower than a stacked sub.

The rigging. Grid height is 56 feet from the deck to the top of the gridiron. The system is 22 single-purchase counterweight line sets plus a motorised first electric, each set on 2-inch outside-diameter pipe, 40 feet long, hung on six lift points. Arbor capacity is 1,500 pounds per pipe, available loading weight on the rigging loading bridge is 20,000 pounds, the loading gallery is 62 feet above the lock rail, and the packet states plainly that there is no winch capacity and no pin rail. Batten working heights run from a 48-inch low trim to a 52-foot high trim. The line set schedule is published set by set with distances from plaster, and the packet tells the reader to confirm current positions with the technical director because the mid-stage black, legs and borders migrate.

The load-in, which is the part to read first. The docks are not at dock height. They are at stage floor grade, and the packet states that everything must be ramped in and ramped down. There are two loading bays with room for two tandem 53-foot tractor-trailers side by side; the exterior roll-up doors are 13 feet high by 7 feet 9½ inches wide, and the double swing doors onto the stage are 9 feet 11 inches by 7 feet 5 inches. Overnight parking on the property may be available for two 53-foot trailers and three tour buses, subject to the technical director's agreement in advance. There is no shop — small repairs are possible in the receiving area with handheld power tools only.

Power. Two separate electrical tie-in boxes sit backstage at the rear centre stage entrance: one 400-amp three-phase service and one 200-amp three-phase service, both on cam-lock connectors, with ground and neutral reversed to code, and the packet states that no licensed electrician is required to tie into the cam connections. House power amplifiers are wired on a separate leg with an isolated ground. Lighting runs on 122 dimmers at 2.4 kilowatts to 200 twenty-amp circuits, controlled from an ETC Element, with the packet noting that there are no spare or replacement dimmer modules available.

Two more that a touring production plans around. Truck and bus shore power is two 50-amp receptacles just inside the loading dock doors — and the theatre publishes that it holds no extension cords, so a minimum of 50 feet of cord has to arrive with the trucks. And the house mix position is approximately 90 feet from the downstage edge, centred, about 30 feet behind the leading edge of the balcony, in an area of roughly 25 by 12 feet shared with the lighting console.

The packet also publishes the building's own inventory, which is a different kind of fact from a specification and is recorded here as the venue states it: the house system is listed as an EAW KF650z main system, four per side, with four SB600 subwoofers and Renkus-Heinz front fill, mixed on a Yamaha CL-5, with a published microphone list, seven Clear-Com positions, a Listen assistive listening system with twenty belt packs, sixteen four-by-eight platforms, a reversible Rosco dance floor and a Yamaha C-7 piano tuned for each performance. What a visiting production needs from that list is not the brand names but the shape: the house can present a conventional show from its own kit, and anything beyond it arrives on a truck through a door that is 7 feet 9 inches wide at grade.

Finally, two rental conditions from the theatre's own page. Nothing may be taped or tacked to the walls, and no painting or marking of walls or stage deck is permitted — with spike tape and gaffer tape named as the exceptions. No glitter, no sequins. And a rehearsal or load-in day that needs the building is treated as an additional day, with the technical cost of that day attaching to it — which is to say the build is budgeted as a day, not as an hour before doors.

Outside the theatre, the largest covered span in Fort Pierce is a county building. The Havert L. Fenn Center at 2000 Virginia Avenue publishes a 22,700 square foot Main Exhibit Hall and six flexible meeting rooms ranging from 1,100 to 9,100 square feet, with large loading doors and direct room access named as features. It publishes no ceiling height, no rigging capacity and no service rating, which puts the hanging plot and the power draw in the site-visit column rather than the document column — the same gap that Port St. Lucie's event centre leaves in a far longer document.

The scheduling fact attached to that building is one a production has to know before it books a date in it. The Fenn Center serves as St. Lucie County's Special Needs Shelter in certain emergencies. In a county on this coast, that is not a remote contingency between June and November: it is a building with a standing public-safety claim on it that outranks any event contract, and the planning answer is a named alternative held in reserve rather than a clause.

On the water, the Fort Pierce City Marina is publicly owned and operated, established 28 October 1937, and it is the rare waterfront site that publishes its electrical service: 30-amp, 50-amp and 100-amp service at 110 and 220 volts. For an event on the basin that is a published starting point for a power plan instead of an assumption, and it is the only shore-power figure any Fort Pierce site publishes apart from the theatre's two 50-amp dock receptacles. The marina sits in the middle of downtown, two blocks east of the theatre, which is the single most useful geographic fact in this city for anyone building a multi-site event: the theatre, the marina, the downtown streets and the waterfront are inside a few hundred yards of one another, so one road closure and one crew can reach all of it.

That downtown waterfront is also changing. The Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency adopted the Downtown Master Plan in November 2022, and the conceptual design for Marina Square has since been finalised — published as a flexible public space intended to accommodate concerts, farmers markets, festivals, family activities and community gatherings, with enhanced parking strategies, emergency and service access, waterfront promenades and expanded public gathering space. It is a long-term vision framing phased implementation rather than a built facility, so nothing in it can be planned against yet. What it does say is that the city's own redevelopment agency expects its principal downtown event ground to be rebuilt around events, and a producer taking a Fort Pierce date more than a season ahead should confirm the state of that ground rather than assume today's layout.

What no Fort Pierce or St. Lucie County page publishes, for any outdoor site in this city, is a ground-protection requirement, a vehicle route, a point load or a generator policy. The parks pages give hours and reservation rules; the code gives permits and decibels; neither gives a crew the figures it needs to put weight on grass or get a truck to a stage position. On a Fort Pierce build the site visit does real work, and the one document that does answer those questions — the theatre's packet — answers them only for the one building it describes.