"Anything is possible" in the effort to turn one of St. Croix’s most blighted but most visible areas into a gateway to the island, according to Robert Graham, director of the V.I. Housing Authority.
The focus of the public hearing Wednesday at the University of the Virgin Island’s St. Croix campus was the long vacant Ralph de Chabert housing community, the blighted, blasted blocks of former public housing now run down and vacant. Seaplanes flying into Christiansted come in low over the area, getting a picture of the island sharply at odds with the visions of tropical paradise the Department of Tourism works so hard to sell.
But those acres of what looks like a war zone could be in for big changes if the Housing Authority’s plans come to fruition. West Christiansted should be a gateway to the island, and the VIHA is about to apply for a $150,000 grant from the federal government to get the ball rolling, Graham said.
The "transformation plan" for the Chabert neighborhood begins with demolition of the existing buildings and the vacant 264 public housing units, possibly as early as August 2012. In their place the plan envisions a neighborhood of 164 new, energy-efficient units. But that’s just the start.
Wednesday’s meeting was to talk about options and possibilities of what could be developed by private and public entities. By leveraging public and private development, the neighborhood could offer a mix of income and housing types and even provide a catalyst for improvements in the nearby JFK and Jackson Terrace housing communities.
Ideas Jackson discussed included a new terminal for Seaborne Airlines which would then allow a boardwalk to extend east past the development. That stretch of beach east from Seaborne is barely used because, between the Chabert ruins, bush covered lots and WAPA generating plant it’s difficult to reach. Graham suggested the neighborhood might be a good location for a "carnival museum," which could include workspace for local carnival creators to work.
Audience members suggested the school in the vicinity of the three housing project could become a charter school. Another suggested a combined police and fire station might be a good fit. A senior center and marketplace were other suggestions.
Some of the suggestions might sound like pie in the sky, but Fradique Rocha of the public housing planning firm CVR Associates, who is working with VIHA, said you can’t get anything if you don’t try. He noted the date of the hearing, July 20, was the 42nd anniversary of Apollo 11, the first manned moon landing. That required some pretty big dreaming too, he said.
The authority will apply for the planning grant from federal Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. The $150,000 will allow planners, architects, environmental and economic consultants to begin spinning the ideas into a transformation plan.
Graham presented an aggressive timetable for the project, with demolition of the Chabert projects beginning as early as October 2012, and development beginning the following year. The public housing portion of the project alone would run about $57 million, Graham said, probably paid for through tax-increment financing and some money from HUD.
That all might be optimistic, Graham admitted, but it was a good target. Something will be done there, and he called on the public’s involvement in the planning to help shape it.
But the old, abandoned buildings are definitely going. That much, he and Rocha said, is certain.
