Sept. 25, 2008 — Developers of the big casino, beach, marina and golf resort proposed for Estate Williams and Punch on St. Croix have submitted an updated Coastal Zone Management permit application and hearings are expected soon.
Williams and Punch Partners applied to CZM last November, (see "'Like Carrying Logs': Resort Developers Celebrate Application Milestone") but CZM asked for more information and deemed the application incomplete. The partners submitted a new, updated application Aug. 25, which CZM deemed "complete" on Sept. 12.
"What is required now is for them to bring in additional copies of their environmental assessment report and so forth for public review," said Norman Williams, an assistant director of the Department of Planning and Natural Resources overseeing CZM. Once everyone has all the copies, there would be a 30-day period in which to hold public hearings and another 30 days to rule on the permit, Williams said.
"The extra copies are actually being shipped today," Chris Elliot, a partner in the project, said Thursday. "It is almost, I believe, 300 drawings and about 1,200 pages of information, both printed and electronic."
Williams and Elliot both said Nov. 6 had been set as a tentative date for a public hearing.
Asked how things stood, Elliot said the partners are happy to be moving forward.
"We are very pleased to have been deemed complete," he said. "It has been a very interactive process with CZM, working to best protect the environment while still being able to build and still be able to develop and provide jobs."
The development is labor intensive, Elliot said.
"We guarantee to the PFA (V.I. Public Finance Authority) we will have 836 permanent full time jobs once the construction is complete," Elliot said. "But we are fully expecting to hire something more than 1,200 direct hires, and our economists tell us from that another 2,000 are likely to spring up. That’s 2000 new jobs in support and spin-off businesses. So we think it is a real win-win. The government will be getting a huge amount of additional taxes from the project. We have worked very hard and our environmental impact has been minimized, and we will be creating a tremendous econ boost to west end of St. Croix."
Once through the CZM hurdle, Williams and Punch must get the Army Corps of Engineers to sign off. Williams and Punch has been focused on CZM because it comes first, but talks with them have suggested there are no major problems on the horizon, Elliot said.
"From the beginning, they said they saw no roadblocks," he said. "Only speed bumps. We are taking care of the speed bumps. But they were very pleased when they visited the site three months ago, with how limited the impact was."
The proposed resort project borders Rainbow Beach on the South and Sunset Beach on the North. (See: "Williams and Punch Developers Address Concerns About Roads, Beach Access.")
The resort plans call for a 378-unit main hotel. Of those, 322 will be in one central hotel and casino complex. Around that will be three swimming pools: an adult pool, a family pool and a recreational pool with a water slide and other attractions, he said. An 18-hole public golf course is to run eastward up into the forested hills of Estates Williams and Punch. Two channels are to be cut inland, carving a lagoon for a 64-slip inland marina and providing two ways for water to come in and out. The channels and lagoon will create a small beach island of sorts, with a small bridge coming over where the existing road intersects with the planned channel. On the artificial island, developers plan a 56-room beach hotel.
Three residential areas called "golf villa complexes" are part of the project, too. They are to have 144 residential lots of about an acre each.
The most controversial aspect of the plan calls for moving the shore road inland. Plans have the road splitting off at Rainbow Beach and go in about 800 feet, turning north. Then it blends with Creque Dam Road, and then rejoins Northside Road.
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