Development Madness in the East End
Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:10 pm
This is from the Sept 28 VI Daily News:
ST. THOMAS - A largely undeveloped stretch of busy Smith Bay Road soon could include five new developments - comprising nearly 300 new upscale condominiums, two retail centers and a large warehouse-storage center - if two more proposals are approved, including one up for vote tonight.
A string of projects are planned along a 0.7-mile span along the two-lane federal highway, from just east of East End Cemetery to just west of Sapphire Beach. The set of new developments is generating concern about the impact to humans from traffic congestion and to wildlife due to habitat loss.
The East End provides habitat for varied wildlife, including birds, mongoose, lizards, deer and the Virgin Islands tree boa, a federally endangered species indigenous to the territory.
But Smith Bay Road is also a heavily traveled thoroughfare connecting Red Hook to Smith Bay. The V.I. government this year opened the now publicly owned land along Lindqvist Beach, ensuring that visitor, resident and taxi traffic along the road will continue to build.
Although the wheels of permitting the developments already are turning, the V.I. Public Works Department now is trying to get a handle on what is planned. And the V.I. Division of Comprehensive and Coastal Zone Planning is trying to coordinate the various projects as much as possible, although its recommendations would be voluntary guidelines that developers could choose not to follow.
Alerted early this month about the string of five new developments by The Daily News, Public Works Commissioner Darryl Smalls said this week that only two have come to the department for review. He could not specify which two those were.
The V.I. Division of Comprehen-sive and Coastal Zone Planning, on the other hand, has been aware for months of the coming new developments. Worried that the span of road could become cluttered and chaotic, the division is making it a priority area, director Wanda Mills-Bocachica said. The division would like to hire an urban design consultant and work with developers on agreeing to uniform design standards, she said.
Mills-Bocachica wants to open discussions about using similar setbacks, signage styles, color coordination, orientation and access ways, including turn lanes, in order to lend the stretch a sense of order.
"I would risk my job on it," she said. "If that area continues along the trend of the northern strip of Smith Bay Road, as a professional, I would be embarrassed. I don't want to see the chaos there."
Project specifics
Three plans already have been approved:
- The Residences at Cabes Point. The 7.75-acre property near Lindqvist Beach has a major CZM permit for 17 luxury condominiums.
- Al Cohen's East. The nearly 8-acre property between Pavilions and Pools Hotel and Sapphire Bay West Condominiums has a major CZM permit for 32 condominiums spread among eight buildings.
- A retail center across from the Lindqvist Beach entrance. Steve and Karen Jamron received a Senate rezoning from a residential to a business secondary-neighborhood designation in order to develop a shopping complex.
Two more developments are under consideration: a Smith Bay Commercial Center with shops, condominiums and a warehouse next to the cemetery and a $62 million condominium complex between Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort & Spa and Linqvist Beach.
The condominium complex next to Wyndham is scheduled to be voted upon by the St. Thomas Coastal Zone Management Committee tonight. The commercial center would require a rezoning and is awaiting action from the V.I. Legislature.
Horace Callwood, Raymond Francis and Arturo Watlington Jr., who own 12 acres in Estate Smith Bay just east of the cemetery, applied for a change from A-1 agricultural zoning to B-2 business secondary-neighborhood zoning. Their plans call for a 42,600-square-foot warehouse, a 40,000-square-foot retail center and four condominium buildings housing 16 units.
The rezoning application has been forwarded to the Senate with notes of caution from the Division of Comprehensive and Coastal Zone Planning. The division recommended that the landowners instead be granted a change to W-1 waterfront pleasure zoning, which permits fewer uses than does B-2 zoning. Additionally, the division recommended against grant-/ing a use variance that would allow the warehouse, which is proposed to be set back 20 to 24 feet from the road.
A 214-unit upscale condominium project near Wyndham, being developed by South Carolina-based Smith Bay Developers, was scheduled to be voted upon by the St. Thomas CZM Committee earlier this month.
At the last moment, however, the developers temporarily withdrew their application so that concerns raised at the project's public hearing - including those regarding wildlife and building height - could be addressed.
Included on the 8.6-acre site would be four six-story residential buildings, a sewage treatment plant, a restaurant, a nightclub, three swimming pools, an office building and some 338 parking spaces. A "lazy river," a common water park amenity that is like a long pool floating people along in inner tubes, also is planned to wind throughout the property.
Minimizing the impacts
Developers and designers of the new projects planned for Smith Bay Road describe a variety of measures they have taken, or would be willing to take, in order to lessen the strain on both humans and wildlife.
For Al Cohen's East, the developer set aside 2 acres as tree boa habitat, and came to a memorandum of understanding with the V.I. Division of Fish and Wildlife to ensure the snake had "corridors" of canopy to move from tree to tree, project designer Mike deHaas said.
Planning to contain excess rainwater or runoff in the flood-prone area, designers met with neighboring Sapphire Bay West Condominium owners to discuss mitigation measures. "They wanted to see what we were providing," deHaas said. "We were providing a pretty intensive stormwater mitigation plan and a retention pond that slowly dissipates the water."
DeHaas said that designers previously met with Public Works engineers, who said that turn lanes would not be necessary for the 64-parking-space development.
At the time Steve Jamron was granted a rezoning to allow a retail center on his property across from Lindqvist, the developer planned an approximately 80,000-square-foot facility, he said. Now, however, plans are still in design, with a cluster of buildings being considered.
"We're hoping to improve over what we planned and not have such big concrete monolithic buildings, and scatter them into a town-center style," Jamron said. "We certainly want to keep as much green space as possible, and we're going to pay attention to the tree boa endangered species."
Jamron hired an engineer and had a traffic study of the site done, he said. The engineer told him that Smith Bay Road was a rapidly developing area that ultimately would require provisions such as turn lanes for smooth traffic flow. Jamron said he awaits a Public Works directive on what measures his development and others along the road should include.
"Based on those discussions, and since we're not ready to begin yet, we're waiting to see what the overall traffic pattern will be," Jamron said. "I think it should all be thought of as an entity, not as individual pieces."
Robert Hart, project representative for the Residences at Cabes Point, was traveling overseas and could not be reached this month for comment on any steps that developer PRM Caribbean might be taking to minimize the impact of the development.
The two projects still under consideration are subject to any requirements the V.I. government might impose for conserving green space or aiding traffic flow.
For the 214-unit Smith Bay Developers condominium project, the developers will preserve a salt pond and a buffer zone around it for wildlife habitat, project designer William Karr said.
As for traffic impacts, the developers would be willing to pay an "impact fee" if the territory had them, Karr said. Such a fee, which numerous municipalities use, could be used to for purchasing land to widen a roadway or to repair pavement in the vicinity, Karr said.
The Virgin Islands does not, however, have impact fees at this time. In their absence, Karr could not specify any steps the project is taking to ease traffic impact.
For the Smith Bay Commercial Center near the cemetery, developer Horace Callwood said he is prepared to do "whatever the government requires me to do" in terms of preserving green space, adding turn lanes or making any other special provisions.
One step Callwood plans to take of his own volition, however, is to install sidewalks along his property. "I am going to, without any prompting from the government, provide sidewalks along the property, even though they will be going nowhere," he said. "I think every project along the way should be required to have sidewalks." Eventually, the walkway could be included in a system of them along the road, Callwood said.
Lingering concerns
After The Daily News brought the string of planned Smith Bay Road developments to Public Works' attention, Smalls said the department would work on reviewing them for traffic control measures.
"We recognize that there are several developments that are about to take place," Smalls said. "They will be reviewed to determine what additional requirements might be necessary - i.e., turn lanes. Traffic lights would not be our first priority."
Smith Bay Road will be included in Public Works' territorywide Multi-Modal Transit Study, Smalls said. The study will include all existing and planned projects in the Virgin Islands, he said, allowing the department to make plans to maintain and improve road infrastructure as needed. Completing the study should take one year after a contract is executed shortly, Smalls said.
Comprehensive and Coastal Zone Planning Division planners, for their part, believe development on Smith Bay Road - especially as it is a thoroughfare connecting numerous tourist destinations - should be more cohesive.
"We're working feverishly at our office to at least save part of Smith Bay Road," Mills-Bocachica said. "That particular section has at least five developments planned for it. I don't have a problem with development, but the success of those projects depends on their attractibility. Attractiveness is part of it and function is part of it."
Mills-Bocachica recently traveled to Rutgers University to seek guidance on best practices for urban design from around the country. With that advice in hand, "It's a matter from now contacting the developers, looking at the plans they've submitted, looking at the conflict areas, helping work those out," she said. "Then we'll have the urban designer put the finishing touches on what they've done."
The planning division cannot mandate that developers employ uniform design standards, Mills-Bocachica acknowledged.
"We will have to work with individual developers to get them to buy into this concept of uniting - getting them to see a bigger picture that will be beneficial to them," she said. "It's a collaborative process, and I realize there are certain limitations in terms of what we can impose."
Meanwhile, community groups continue to express concerns that despite the work of V.I. government departments, much of the island simply is being overdeveloped.
In Red Hook Community Alliance president Andrea King's view, the string of new developments will create frustrating new traffic snarls on an already congested - and still expanding - area of the island.
In addition, King said, speeding is already a problem on Smith Bay Road, where the speed limit is 35 mph. More vehicles will worsen the wear and tear on the pavement. And the road's curvy layout could contribute to collisions between cars moving forward and those turning in and out of the new projects, she said.
"It's really disturbing. Not only do we have the five projects on Smith Bay Road, but also the new Ritz-Carlton Club and Dolphin Cove" on the other side of Red Hook, she said. "It's going to be unbelievable. The traffic already is congested."
The loss of green space for wildlife habitat also is upsetting, King said. "Smith Bay Road has always been considered country," she said. "People's rights are being violated in terms of all these major developments happening so quickly."
King called for a moratorium on rezonings until a Comprehensive Land and Water Use Plan - which would guide future development - is implemented for the territory. Such a plan has been discussed for decades; one was drawn up in the early 1990s, but never implemented by the V.I. Legislature.
St. Thomas, King said, can handle only so many luxury condominium complexes and retail centers, and it does not need more. "No one is planning for the future," she said. "You can't develop every square inch of an island."
- Contact Lynn Freehill at 774-8772 ext. 311 or e-mail lfreehill@dailynews.vi.
ST. THOMAS - A largely undeveloped stretch of busy Smith Bay Road soon could include five new developments - comprising nearly 300 new upscale condominiums, two retail centers and a large warehouse-storage center - if two more proposals are approved, including one up for vote tonight.
A string of projects are planned along a 0.7-mile span along the two-lane federal highway, from just east of East End Cemetery to just west of Sapphire Beach. The set of new developments is generating concern about the impact to humans from traffic congestion and to wildlife due to habitat loss.
The East End provides habitat for varied wildlife, including birds, mongoose, lizards, deer and the Virgin Islands tree boa, a federally endangered species indigenous to the territory.
But Smith Bay Road is also a heavily traveled thoroughfare connecting Red Hook to Smith Bay. The V.I. government this year opened the now publicly owned land along Lindqvist Beach, ensuring that visitor, resident and taxi traffic along the road will continue to build.
Although the wheels of permitting the developments already are turning, the V.I. Public Works Department now is trying to get a handle on what is planned. And the V.I. Division of Comprehensive and Coastal Zone Planning is trying to coordinate the various projects as much as possible, although its recommendations would be voluntary guidelines that developers could choose not to follow.
Alerted early this month about the string of five new developments by The Daily News, Public Works Commissioner Darryl Smalls said this week that only two have come to the department for review. He could not specify which two those were.
The V.I. Division of Comprehen-sive and Coastal Zone Planning, on the other hand, has been aware for months of the coming new developments. Worried that the span of road could become cluttered and chaotic, the division is making it a priority area, director Wanda Mills-Bocachica said. The division would like to hire an urban design consultant and work with developers on agreeing to uniform design standards, she said.
Mills-Bocachica wants to open discussions about using similar setbacks, signage styles, color coordination, orientation and access ways, including turn lanes, in order to lend the stretch a sense of order.
"I would risk my job on it," she said. "If that area continues along the trend of the northern strip of Smith Bay Road, as a professional, I would be embarrassed. I don't want to see the chaos there."
Project specifics
Three plans already have been approved:
- The Residences at Cabes Point. The 7.75-acre property near Lindqvist Beach has a major CZM permit for 17 luxury condominiums.
- Al Cohen's East. The nearly 8-acre property between Pavilions and Pools Hotel and Sapphire Bay West Condominiums has a major CZM permit for 32 condominiums spread among eight buildings.
- A retail center across from the Lindqvist Beach entrance. Steve and Karen Jamron received a Senate rezoning from a residential to a business secondary-neighborhood designation in order to develop a shopping complex.
Two more developments are under consideration: a Smith Bay Commercial Center with shops, condominiums and a warehouse next to the cemetery and a $62 million condominium complex between Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort & Spa and Linqvist Beach.
The condominium complex next to Wyndham is scheduled to be voted upon by the St. Thomas Coastal Zone Management Committee tonight. The commercial center would require a rezoning and is awaiting action from the V.I. Legislature.
Horace Callwood, Raymond Francis and Arturo Watlington Jr., who own 12 acres in Estate Smith Bay just east of the cemetery, applied for a change from A-1 agricultural zoning to B-2 business secondary-neighborhood zoning. Their plans call for a 42,600-square-foot warehouse, a 40,000-square-foot retail center and four condominium buildings housing 16 units.
The rezoning application has been forwarded to the Senate with notes of caution from the Division of Comprehensive and Coastal Zone Planning. The division recommended that the landowners instead be granted a change to W-1 waterfront pleasure zoning, which permits fewer uses than does B-2 zoning. Additionally, the division recommended against grant-/ing a use variance that would allow the warehouse, which is proposed to be set back 20 to 24 feet from the road.
A 214-unit upscale condominium project near Wyndham, being developed by South Carolina-based Smith Bay Developers, was scheduled to be voted upon by the St. Thomas CZM Committee earlier this month.
At the last moment, however, the developers temporarily withdrew their application so that concerns raised at the project's public hearing - including those regarding wildlife and building height - could be addressed.
Included on the 8.6-acre site would be four six-story residential buildings, a sewage treatment plant, a restaurant, a nightclub, three swimming pools, an office building and some 338 parking spaces. A "lazy river," a common water park amenity that is like a long pool floating people along in inner tubes, also is planned to wind throughout the property.
Minimizing the impacts
Developers and designers of the new projects planned for Smith Bay Road describe a variety of measures they have taken, or would be willing to take, in order to lessen the strain on both humans and wildlife.
For Al Cohen's East, the developer set aside 2 acres as tree boa habitat, and came to a memorandum of understanding with the V.I. Division of Fish and Wildlife to ensure the snake had "corridors" of canopy to move from tree to tree, project designer Mike deHaas said.
Planning to contain excess rainwater or runoff in the flood-prone area, designers met with neighboring Sapphire Bay West Condominium owners to discuss mitigation measures. "They wanted to see what we were providing," deHaas said. "We were providing a pretty intensive stormwater mitigation plan and a retention pond that slowly dissipates the water."
DeHaas said that designers previously met with Public Works engineers, who said that turn lanes would not be necessary for the 64-parking-space development.
At the time Steve Jamron was granted a rezoning to allow a retail center on his property across from Lindqvist, the developer planned an approximately 80,000-square-foot facility, he said. Now, however, plans are still in design, with a cluster of buildings being considered.
"We're hoping to improve over what we planned and not have such big concrete monolithic buildings, and scatter them into a town-center style," Jamron said. "We certainly want to keep as much green space as possible, and we're going to pay attention to the tree boa endangered species."
Jamron hired an engineer and had a traffic study of the site done, he said. The engineer told him that Smith Bay Road was a rapidly developing area that ultimately would require provisions such as turn lanes for smooth traffic flow. Jamron said he awaits a Public Works directive on what measures his development and others along the road should include.
"Based on those discussions, and since we're not ready to begin yet, we're waiting to see what the overall traffic pattern will be," Jamron said. "I think it should all be thought of as an entity, not as individual pieces."
Robert Hart, project representative for the Residences at Cabes Point, was traveling overseas and could not be reached this month for comment on any steps that developer PRM Caribbean might be taking to minimize the impact of the development.
The two projects still under consideration are subject to any requirements the V.I. government might impose for conserving green space or aiding traffic flow.
For the 214-unit Smith Bay Developers condominium project, the developers will preserve a salt pond and a buffer zone around it for wildlife habitat, project designer William Karr said.
As for traffic impacts, the developers would be willing to pay an "impact fee" if the territory had them, Karr said. Such a fee, which numerous municipalities use, could be used to for purchasing land to widen a roadway or to repair pavement in the vicinity, Karr said.
The Virgin Islands does not, however, have impact fees at this time. In their absence, Karr could not specify any steps the project is taking to ease traffic impact.
For the Smith Bay Commercial Center near the cemetery, developer Horace Callwood said he is prepared to do "whatever the government requires me to do" in terms of preserving green space, adding turn lanes or making any other special provisions.
One step Callwood plans to take of his own volition, however, is to install sidewalks along his property. "I am going to, without any prompting from the government, provide sidewalks along the property, even though they will be going nowhere," he said. "I think every project along the way should be required to have sidewalks." Eventually, the walkway could be included in a system of them along the road, Callwood said.
Lingering concerns
After The Daily News brought the string of planned Smith Bay Road developments to Public Works' attention, Smalls said the department would work on reviewing them for traffic control measures.
"We recognize that there are several developments that are about to take place," Smalls said. "They will be reviewed to determine what additional requirements might be necessary - i.e., turn lanes. Traffic lights would not be our first priority."
Smith Bay Road will be included in Public Works' territorywide Multi-Modal Transit Study, Smalls said. The study will include all existing and planned projects in the Virgin Islands, he said, allowing the department to make plans to maintain and improve road infrastructure as needed. Completing the study should take one year after a contract is executed shortly, Smalls said.
Comprehensive and Coastal Zone Planning Division planners, for their part, believe development on Smith Bay Road - especially as it is a thoroughfare connecting numerous tourist destinations - should be more cohesive.
"We're working feverishly at our office to at least save part of Smith Bay Road," Mills-Bocachica said. "That particular section has at least five developments planned for it. I don't have a problem with development, but the success of those projects depends on their attractibility. Attractiveness is part of it and function is part of it."
Mills-Bocachica recently traveled to Rutgers University to seek guidance on best practices for urban design from around the country. With that advice in hand, "It's a matter from now contacting the developers, looking at the plans they've submitted, looking at the conflict areas, helping work those out," she said. "Then we'll have the urban designer put the finishing touches on what they've done."
The planning division cannot mandate that developers employ uniform design standards, Mills-Bocachica acknowledged.
"We will have to work with individual developers to get them to buy into this concept of uniting - getting them to see a bigger picture that will be beneficial to them," she said. "It's a collaborative process, and I realize there are certain limitations in terms of what we can impose."
Meanwhile, community groups continue to express concerns that despite the work of V.I. government departments, much of the island simply is being overdeveloped.
In Red Hook Community Alliance president Andrea King's view, the string of new developments will create frustrating new traffic snarls on an already congested - and still expanding - area of the island.
In addition, King said, speeding is already a problem on Smith Bay Road, where the speed limit is 35 mph. More vehicles will worsen the wear and tear on the pavement. And the road's curvy layout could contribute to collisions between cars moving forward and those turning in and out of the new projects, she said.
"It's really disturbing. Not only do we have the five projects on Smith Bay Road, but also the new Ritz-Carlton Club and Dolphin Cove" on the other side of Red Hook, she said. "It's going to be unbelievable. The traffic already is congested."
The loss of green space for wildlife habitat also is upsetting, King said. "Smith Bay Road has always been considered country," she said. "People's rights are being violated in terms of all these major developments happening so quickly."
King called for a moratorium on rezonings until a Comprehensive Land and Water Use Plan - which would guide future development - is implemented for the territory. Such a plan has been discussed for decades; one was drawn up in the early 1990s, but never implemented by the V.I. Legislature.
St. Thomas, King said, can handle only so many luxury condominium complexes and retail centers, and it does not need more. "No one is planning for the future," she said. "You can't develop every square inch of an island."
- Contact Lynn Freehill at 774-8772 ext. 311 or e-mail lfreehill@dailynews.vi.