Thursday evening’s fourth and final Christiansted town planning meeting – or charrette – brought a lot of ideas to the forefront of what residents would like to see Christiansted become.
Sponsored by the V.I. Economic Development Authority’s Enterprise Zone Commission, that was exactly the point of the sessions, as the plan should reflect the vision of the community.
At Thursday’s final charrette, which focused on economic development, the general public and panelists who specialize in various subjects that affect community and area development came together to share their ideas, opinions, recommendations and offer possible solutions to the problems that exist in Christiansted.
Now comes the hard part in turning the ideas into an implementable, living plan and not one that gets stored away on a shelf in a back-of-the-building government office.
The governor was there. The labor commissioner was there. The public works commissioner was there. Senators were there too. The property owners of Christiansted were well represented and, more than anyone, said they would like to see Christiansted regain some of its old form.
According to EZC Director Nadine Marchena Kean, coming to consensus on the ideas and solutions would help initiate the development of the town plan, which would in turn provide a road map for the economic, social and architectural development of Christiansted.
With planners and architects in the audience all week long, whoever designs the best plan – by community vote – after the charrettes wins. Then the plan moves to the EDA for approval, and finally the Governor.
Kean said, at that time, the EDA incentivizes what the people want incentivized.
Or as EDA Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Nugent-Hill said, “The government’s role in economic development is to provide the opportunities to make it happen.”
With standing-room only space available at the National Park Service office on Hospital Street, residents and government powerbrokers spoke freely about what they’d like to see done in order to bring the town back to life.
People’s positions and ideas varied. There were calls for more heritage tourism businesses in town; a return to the days of small business, mom-and-pop shops making local candies and carnival wear; and “real” tax incentives geared towards artisans so they’d decide to make the town their home.
“We believe revitalizing the (Alexander) theatre would be a real critical element of revitalizing downtown,” said St. Croix Foundation President Roger Dewey. “And as artists go into an area, they bring back the shops and businesses and do provide the stimulus for a lot of redevelopment.”
He continued, digressing to a recent trip he took for the foundation to Curacao. “Willemstad in Curacao has received World Heritage status from the (United Nations) for their architecture and ours is better,” Dewey said. “I don’t know how in the hell we let this town get the way it is but there is no excuse for this. Christiansted and Frederiksted are two of the most attractive towns in the entire Caribbean.”
Dewey’s idea then sprang to life as he noted that the government can’t do everything but instead should be incentivizing the private sector.
“I’d like to see the enterprise zone tax credit sharply increased,” Dewey said. “How high can we take that tax credit so that it becomes an incentive for people to step up? There’s not a lot of money floating around this community nowadays. We’ve got to come up with creative ways to do that.”
More than a fair share of people who spoke seemed to blame the fact that money was scarce on the banks, namely for not lending enough or as often so to allow people to bring their ideas to life.
Along this line of thinking, Nugent-Hill made mention of the EDA having $30 million left of funding that had to be spent.
“It goes to the bank. You are the client of the bank and the EDA supports your loan,” she said, adding “what it is we have to do is to find ways to encourage our bankers to open up the faucets.”
“Knowing that the EDA has support and the funds are there for loans, we’ve got to do this. But a little bit of pressure can help,” Nugent-Hill said.
Percival Clouden, EDA chief executive officer, added: “We have been meeting with the banks and trying to understand from them why they have turned the pipes, not completely off, but just dripping.”
“We have been trying, since we got our federal grant of $13.1 million, to work with the banks to insure that those $13.1 million turn into $130 million in loans,” Clouden continued.
“The banks have been reluctant and we continue to meet with them to encourage them,” he said. “We’ve applied to the U.S. Treasury to modify some of the conditions which are more favorable for the banks so that they can turn back on the pipes because every community needs to have a strong business community for its survival.”
Gov. John deJongh Jr. had walked from the back of the room to the front while Clouden addressed the banking issue and then decided to offer his remarks.
“What you say about the banks (not lending) is absolutely true,” deJongh said. “It’s a tremendous concern we have. If you look at the last 10 years in the Virgin Islands you’ll see that the banks have more assets and have done less lending.”
“In the last 10 years we’ve only had $2 million in small business loans given in the Virgin Islands,” the governor said. “And 84 percent of those loans were done by off-island banks. It’s a tremendous concern.”
DeJongh then offered his own idea, to audience approval, as a way to force the banks to loan more freely. “If we have to, we’ll start challenging CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) requirements in terms of the lending that they do,” he said. “You can’t say you’ll give me an auto loan but you won’t let me have a loan for my business.”
The Community Reinvestment Act, enacted by Congress in 1977, is intended to encourage banks to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate.
DeJongh said all the three previous nights’ charrettes, which dealt with history and culture, social issues and housing and the environment, were all tied to economic development.
“At the end of the day you need financial resources to do those things. We need economic development to do that. And we need economic development that doesn’t circulate here and then leave the territory,” he said. “We’ve got to do it in a way so that the economic development beneficiaries are the people who live here.”
Club Comanche Owner Jack Pickle summed up Christiansted’s predicament best. “Towns are complex organisms,” Pickle said. “But there’s a lot of opportunity here.”
But Christiansted’s complex, multi-layered problems are going to require some complex solutions and, as this night’s charrette showed, the ideas are plentiful, but there are no easy answers.
