Jan. 11, 2003 – The last barrier to building a shopping center adjacent to the soon-to-be-expanded Crown Bay dock was removed Friday when the Board of Land Use Appeals rejected a challenge by the League of Women Voters to Coastal Zone Management approval of Port Authority plans to build the retail complex.
The league contended that no CZM permit had been obtained for the shops. The Port Authority maintained that a major permit covering the dock expansion includes the retail center.
League officials said they were not objecting to the idea of a shopping center but were challenging government procedures that they said violated the law.
League attorney Gwendolyn Wilds told the appeals board Friday that the Crown Bay development is proceeding with disregard for legal steps laid out in the Coastal Zone Management Act.
Title 12, Section 911 of the V.I. Code, which is the Coastal Zone Management Act, states that developers of leased submerged lands must go through the standard permitting process plus secure ratification by the Legislature and approval by the governor.
"No matter what you decide, 911 is the law," Wilds said. "It can't be refuted."
However, the board voted unanimously to grant a request from the Port Authority dismiss the league's appeal.
The matter had come up at a pre-hearing last August. (See "Crown Bay appeal pre-hearing is legal debate".)
The master plan for developing Crown Bay was approved by the St. Thomas CZM Committee back in 1983, Erva Denham, league president, noted. But she said that when the league asked the Port Authority to see the permit for the retail center, "all they ever sent to us was a letter that referred to the approval of the master plan, as though it were a permit in its own right, which it is not."
Wilds and Denham said the permit approved for dredging Crown Bay and extending the existing dock was in order. But they said the league has yet to see a permit for the retail development adjacent to the dock.
Denham said the dredging permit had all the proper safeguards, all the proper legislative language for getting legislative approval, which it has done. However, "there must have been two versions of the same permit," she said, because the permit the league has seen for the dredging does not cover the shopping center.
When the league argued Friday that the CZM permit for the dock expansion does not cover the proposed retail complex, Darlan Brin, VIPA's new executive director, said that all of the development at the Crown Bay landfill since the mid-'80s has been carried out under that same permit.
At the beginning of Friday's hearing, VIPA attorney Henry Carr moved to have the board dismiss the LWV appeal. The board, however, proceeded to hear the league's arguments.
Carr and Brin, who became VIPA executive director Jan. 1, succeeding Gordon Finch, who retired, both said the long-standing CZM permit covers both the pier extension and the retail development.
Carr also questioned the propriety of bringing a permit appeal forward two decades after the fact. "It is not timely," he said. "All appeals under CZM must be filed within 45 days."
Board of Land Use Appeals members quizzed league officials several times about why there had been no formal objection to the existing permit at any time in the last 20 years. League officials said they had assumed there was a separate permit for the retail development — until they examined the file and discovered none existed.
After about two hours of testimony and several conferences among themselves and consultations with board attorney Michael Law, the appeals board members voted unanimously to grant the Port Authority motion to dismiss the appeal. Voting were Elton Chongasing, acting chair; Reginald George; James Hindels; Aloy Wentworth Nielsen, vice chair; Jose Penn and John Woods.
Hindels suggested the League of Women Voters ask that the territorywide CZM Commission send the league notice of all decisions as they are made.
The long-planned and long-debated Crown Bay marina development project took a leap forward Dec. 18 when the VIPA board voted to issue about $18 million in non-taxable bonds to expand the dock, and $17 million in taxable bonds to construct the retail center on adjacent property. The only fly in the ointment at that time was the LWV appeal. (See "Bond issues OK'd for Crown Bay development".)
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