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Charlotte Amalie
Friday, March 29, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesNPS TAGS $2M TO BUY POST OFFICE, SALT RIVER LAND

NPS TAGS $2M TO BUY POST OFFICE, SALT RIVER LAND

The National Park Service on St. Croix is poised to receive funding that will allow it to purchase two coveted properties: The historic Post Office building in Christiansted and approximately 50 acres in the Salt River National Park and Ecological Reserve.
The Park Service’s fiscal year 2002 budget, which goes into effect in October, contains approximately $2 million for the purchases, said Joel Tutein, superintendent of the Park Service units on the Big Island. What is even more heartening, Tutein said, is that the funding for the Salt River and Post Office building purchases are ranked 16th and 19th respectively out of 50 projects on the agency’s priority list.
"We’re pretty high up there," Tutein said. "I don’t want to say it’s a sure thing, but I feel really good about it."
The Post Office building acquisition has long been a priority for Tutein. Two years ago the U.S. Postal Service announced it was leaving the 250-year-old building in order to find a larger downtown location. Tutein and the Park Service, owner of the Christiansted National Historic Site in which the building sits, want to turn the structure into a museum dedicated to the African slave trade.
The hangup, however, was that the Postal Service was asking $1.2 million for the building, which needs millions of dollars worth of renovation work.
Because the Park and Postal Services are both federal agencies, Park Service officials wanted a no-cost transfer of the building. But the Postal Service rejected the idea. It did, however, reduce the sale price to $875,000, Tutein said.
The management plan for the Christiansted National Historic Site, which includes Fort Christiansvaern, the Scale House, Customs House and Steeple Building, calls for the Park Service to tell the story of St. Croix between 1735 and 1917, when the Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark.
So far, Tutein said, military, religious and trade histories have been interpreted, but not that of the 50,000 enslaved Africans imported to St. Croix and sold on the stairs of the Danish West Indies & Guinea Co. warehouse building, which now houses the post office.
Before any money is set aside for renovation, it has to be purchased. Once that is completed, Tutein will lobby for funding in the FY 2003 budget.
"You can’t put one dollar into fixing something that isn’t yours," he said, noting that the 2002 budget has already been marked up, so money for renovation will have to wait.
Meanwhile, approximately $1.1 million will be used to acquire about 53 acres of land at Salt River. The acreage is part of a 74-acre tract in the park’s northeastern section that contains the remnants of a hotel. Some 21 acres was purchased from Texas-based owners on Sept. 29 for $450,000, with the Park Service having a two-year option to buy the remaining acreage.
"We need to go back in there and finish off the acquisition," Tutein said. "We had until 2003 to come up with the $1.1 million."
The park, co-managed by the Park Service and the V.I. government, consists of 600 acres of submerged land and 312 acres of land adjacent to Salt River Bay. The V.I. government owns about 52 acres in the area, including the five-acre Columbus Landing site. With past purchases, the Park Service now owns approximately 150 acres, not counting the 53 acres that will be purchased soon.
The remaining acreage consists of small individual tracts, including the plot on which the Salt River Marina is located.

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