With less than three weeks before Royal Caribbean’s 6,300-passenger Oasis of the Seas arrives at Crown Bay, the V.I. Port Authority (VIPA) is scrambling to provide adequate facilities for its guests.
Anteing up $200,000 to support a daiquiri bar and lounge with an as-yet-unnamed vendor partner, VIPA on Wednesday approved the expenditure to entertain passengers traveling on the world’s largest cruise ship.
Authority staff requested the board’s approval to use $200,000 to establish the operation. Broken down by Diana Richardson, the property manager for the marine terminal, the expenditures for the enterprise, dubbed the “Jumbie Bar,” will include $7,000 for the kitchen, $12,000 for the bar, $33,000 to install shutters, and $44,000 for tables and chairs.
The facility will offer tables on the exterior and on the inside of building H at the Austin “Babe” Monsanto Marine Terminal, and will incorporate a small preparation area in the lower section of the building, Richardson said.
The bar will have a rustic theme, using Cruzan rum barrels for landscaping, with an overall objective of spending money on items that can be used in the future.
The dock itself will be improved with a building for passenger security screening, funded by the cruise ship company.
The initial arrangement with the unnamed operator will be for a period of 10 months, with options for renewal. “We are working in good faith with the operator,” Justin Moorhead, a consultant working with the authority, told the board. Moorhead said that the impending deadline required coordination of efforts.
Other efforts to spruce up the Crown Bay area will be an $18,000 facelift for buildings directly across the street from the terminal. The three buildings facing will be painted and used for advertising billboards, according to Richardson. VIPA owns two of the buildings, the Klein Building and Building 16, and the V.I. Waste Management Authority owns the third. All three are metal, and two of them have rusted facades. Advertising revenues from the billboards are expected to generate up to $30,000.
The board went over a number of other property and project topics, without going over September and October’s financial statements. These figures are still in the hands of staff as they prepare the authority’s year-end reports, said Cassan Pancham, who chairs both the board and the finance committee.
In other matters, the board approved a lease of raw land to Alpine Energy Group on St. Croix, contingent on provision of appropriate financial information. The decision was made during executive session, and reported afterwards by Don C. Mills, VIPA’s legal counsel.
The authority’s full board was in attendance at the Wednesday meeting.
