On Aug. 26, 2019 , the City of Port St. Lucie Council voted 5 to 0 to ﾠleaseﾠ the former VGTI Florida facility to theﾠ Cleveland Clinic for $1 a year for 15 years.

The lease, began Oct. 1, with an option for Cleveland Clinic to purchase the 107,000-square- foot research lab for $14.5 million. Cleveland Clinic would also have to create at least 100 jobs above the average salary for the city over the next five years.

The VGTI was founded in 2019 as an independent non-profit institute with the assistance of a $60 million grant from the State of Florida’s Innovation Incentive Fund intended to anchor and drive the State’s expansion strategy for biomedical research.

VGTI Florida announced plans to close the research institute on August 14, 2015. VGTI Florida’s failing was attributed to the cumulative effect of multiple factors including the lack of a university affiliation, National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget cuts, and the large debt burden associated with the construction of its 100,000 sq ft state-of-the-art facility at the Tradition Center for Innovation in Port St. Lucie.