In four days of brainstorming, a collection of concerned citizens representing the St. Thomas-St. John Chamber of Commerce, the V.I. and federal governments, civic and non-profit groups, local and mainland consulting firms, and in some cases just themselves came up with 44 proposals to address Charlotte Amalie transportation problems.
They presented their findings to the public and the media Friday in a forum intended to take one hour that actually took two, and barely skimmed the surface at that.
Early in the presentation, Public Works Commissioner Harold Thompson Jr. said, "We will take the inputs from this workshop to develop a plan." At the end of the session, he said, "The next step is to put paper and thought into reality. . . We will put together a plan with a timetable and a funding mechanism."
Asked to define who he meant by "we," Thompson told The Source afterward that he was referring to "the administration — Government House."
Chamber of Commerce executive director Joe Aubain, in the final public comment of the forum, made it clear in a couple of impassioned sentences that that isn't good enough for the business community. He said he was "sick and tired of seeing other destinations" restore and reinvigorate their historic districts and attract more tourists as a result, "while we remain in the dust."
To the strongest applause of the afternoon Aubain added, "It's over, folks. It's time we took control."
And by "we" he meant the private sector and the people of the community repeatedly referred to by presenters as the "stakeholders" in local development.
Aubain told The Source that the chamber will submit its report of the workshop proposals to Gov. Charles W. Turnbull by the middle of next week and will at the same time request that the governor create a public-private partnership "commission and community process to go forward."
The mandate of the Transportation and Community Development Workshop co-sponsored by the chamber and Turnbull was to "consider ways to address transportation problems in Charlotte Amalie that also support community development objectives."
Many saw it more specifically as a forum to articulate opposition to the so-called Plan 8 that the V.I. government has embraced, at least tentatively. The plan calls, among other things, for extending the four-lane roadway that now ends at Emancipation Garden around the harbor side of the Legislature building and eastward to Mandela Circle.
Aubain said at the end of Friday's meeting, "The chamber stands firm in its commitment to oppose Plan 8."
The workshop proposals reflect the availability of some $20 million in federal highway funds to improve transportation between the Holiday Inn Windward Passage Hotel and Raphune Hill. They were circulated in outline form Friday, unranked but divided into the categories of Travel Options, Traffic Congestion Reduction, Freight Movement, Historic Preservation and Public Space Improvements, and Institutional/Process. Timelines range from "immediate" to five or more years.
Among the proposals:
– Adoption of a comprehensive land use and transportation master plan.
– Pedestrian and bicycle connection from Havensight to Frenchtown.
– What Keith Richards, the governor's capital improvement planning representative, referred to as "waterbuses" serving the airport, downtown and Havensight. ("We have water taxis now that you can hire," he noted.)
– Development of an east-west corridor north of downtown.
– Redesign of the Lovers Lane and Mandela Circle intersections.
– Paid parking downtown.
– Parking east and west of downtown with reliable public transit to and from town.
– Revitalization of Fort Christian and Rothschild Francis "Market" Square.
– Transporting of cargo freight from Crown Bay to non-downtown destinations via barge.
– Creation of waterfront promenade enhancements — landscaping, shade, seating, lighting.
– Staggered work hours for town employees.
– Staggered arrival and departure times for cruise ships (which now typically coincide with morning and afternoon rush hours).
Delegate Donna Christian-Christensen, in a video message, spoke of the need to "conserve the historic nature as well as the transportation, cultural and commercial needs of the community."
Myron Jackson, director of the Planning and Natural Resources Department's Division of Archeology and Historic Preservation, urged those present to think of the Charlotte Amalie waterfront as "our front yard." Showing slides of historic pictures of the town and harbor, he noted that there were once beaches on the Long Bay shore, and King's Wharf, across from today's Coast Guard headquarters, was once a bustling commercial and social center of the community.
"We've been disconnected from the sea" by landfills undertaken since the 1950s in the name of development, he said.
One voice raised in public opposition to the workshop was that of Historic Preservation Commission chair Edith deJongh Woods, who called in to radio talk shows during the week to defend Plan 8 and assail its critics. She told Sam Topp on Friday morning that she was not going to attend the day's public presentation "because I don't go where I'm not invited."
In another call-in, she noted that she has been accused of defending the plan because her son, architect John Woods of the Jaredian Design Group, is a consultant to the project. She said that "anyone who knows me" would know better than to make such an accusation.
Richards noted that many government offices are located outside of downtown today, and that the movement of personnel between locations contributes to traffic congestion.
Asked whether the "problem" being addressed by the proposed "solutions" was too much traffic downtown or too little infrastructure to accommodate its flow, Jackie Grimshaw, a Chicago transportation consultant, said, "The problem is mobility and congestion."
Architectural designer Jon Euwema said, "Planning has been a four-letter word in the Virgin Islands for a long time. Architects are not planners."
Retail executive Avna Paiewonsky Cassinelli said more than $100 million in federal highway funds has come into the territory since 1992, but the traffic situation is worse than ever.
"The problem has been how the projects and the contractors have been selected," she said. "The key thing is a meaningful process to determine what projects should be done, and the private sector must be involved in determining what contractors will be used."
The key to the implementation of any of the proposals, Richards said, is "the will and commitment of the private and public sectors."
