Mary Boehm says she feels under siege. With pile drivers and earth movers, the government is at her doorstep and, she believes, poised to take her property. She has resorted to asking the court for a restraining order, to temporarily halt work on the much touted Christiansted boardwalk while a dispute is settled involving Club Comanche's claim on shoreline property.
District Court Judge Raymond Finch will hear the motion at 10 a.m. Monday.
It won't be a minute too soon as far as Boehm is concerned, because construction work is continuing this weekend.
"I want the boardwalk," Boehm stressed. "It will enhance the property" and will be good for St. Croix in general.
But she also wants the government to agree that it won't use the project as a way to advance a position that a portion of land between the hotel and the sea is public land.
At stake is not just a small strip of land but the rights to the use of the sea adjoining the property. A dock in the heart of Christiansted can be extremely valuable, especially if the anticipated casino-driven development of the downtown area materializes.
"This is the most strategic piece of Chrisitansted," Boehm claimed. "It's the most important piece of real estate here."
Club Comanche Inc. filed an Action to Quiet Title for the property in District Court in 1998. Since then, it has tried to resolve the issue in general and particularly tried to work out an easement arrangement for construction of the boardwalk.
"We have been in meetings and discussions for an almost solid year and a half," Boehm said.
Assistant Attorney General Richard M. Prendergast, the government's lead attorney on the case, said Friday that he was busy preparing a reply to Club Comanche's motion for a temporary restraining order and could not discuss the matter.
However, in court filings the government's position is clear: Plot 40 Strand Street may belong to the Comanche, but Plot 40-A (by the sea) is landfill and belongs to the people of the Virgin Islands.
Public Works came up with the 40-A designation – and similar designations for parcels along Strand Street – about 20 years ago. Arnold Golden, former Public Works commissioner, testified in a similar case brought by one of the Comanche's neighbors in the early 1990s, that he ordered the adjustment made because the old Danish measure map showed considerably less land area between the street and the sea than now exists.
In a government motion in the Club Comanche case, Prendergast states that Plot 40-A "is either 'submerged' lands (up to the mean high tide water mark), or 'reclaimed' artificially filled land, within the meaning of the 1974 Territorial Submerged Lands Act (to the extent that the parcel extends inland from the mean high tide water mark) in that it was reclaimed from the sea between 1760 and 1779 by large-scale artificial land filling."
Further, Prendergast says that even if the disputed parcel were not filled land, but a natural build up of land from the sea, the owners lost their right to it by building structures without V.I. government permits. Edward C. Dale, former owner of the Commanche, put in a catwalk and a small dock in the 1950s (under a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit) and also built a replica of an old sugar mill, a portion of which extends into Strand Lane, a public road.
The dock and catwalk were hurricane victims, and the mill, which used to be the honeymoon suite, has become a warehouse for construction materials. Boehm said she has had all the permits necessary to rebuild the dock since 1996, but has been stopped time and again both by storms and the government.
At this point, she said, the property looks run down and she believes it is getting a poor reputation – a situation which she suggested may be by design.
"It's a well thought-out thing," she said. "It's a well-monitored thing, too. It may be a thing that comes to a head in District Court on Monday.
