Aug. 28, 2001 – The residents of the historic Savan section of downtown St. Thomas finally opened the doors on Tuesday to the community center that it took them nearly 20 years of effort to get.
The sparkling new two-story building on General Gade will be the home for police officers assigned to patrol the streets of the historic neighborhood, as well as the center for activities that are expected to include after-school tutoring programs, educational classes for young people and adults and meetings of community groups.
The center also would be perfect for use as an emergency shelter and distribution center in case of natural disasters, Franke Hoheb, a worker for the Red Cross, said.
"This building will be at the heart of the Savan community," Delegate Donna Christian-Christensen said. "Today we celebrate the determination of Savaneros to take this community back."
The delegate was one of many elected officials — including Gov. Charles W. Turnbull, Lt. Gov. Gerard Luz James II and nearly every senator from the St. Thomas-St. John district — who spoke Tuesday at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the community center. The seats for nearly 100 people under a tent were filled, and dozens more people stood in the shade alongside the building to watch the proceedings.
Behind the opening of the center lay nearly 20 years of planning, applying for federal grants, rewriting of plans, application for more grants and, finally, construction of the building. The facility stood nearly finished for more than a year while government officials and community groups tried to reach agreement on who would control and maintain the building once it opened.
"This, of course, has been a long, hard battle," said Commissioner Ira Hobson of the Housing, Parks and Recreation Department, which will oversee the use of the building in conjunction with the not-for-profit group We Savaneros.
Hobson added that "the work has just begun, because a building is just a building," and it will take work by the people of Savan to implement the programs they want to see in the community center. He said he would ask We Savaneros for an action plan on the use of the facility.
"This building was meant for the people of Savan, and it is those people who should say how it will be used," Hobson said during the reception after the ribbon-cutting.
The opening of the Savan Community Center has been touted as an important step in the revitalization of one of the oldest neighborhoods on St. Thomas. Savan was built about 230 years ago as a residential neighborhood for free blacks, Jews and French Huguenots.
The community has always been seen as a center of cultural and political life in the Virgin Islands, and many prominent citizens have their roots in Savan, according to Turnbull, who himself grew up just around the corner from the new community center.
But the neighborhood has also been in decline, residents say, with decaying old buildings, open drug dealing in the streets and violent crime a near-nightly occurrence.
"We have a cancer here. We need a doctor to take care of this place," said Romeo Malone, a life-long resident people sometimes refer to as the Mayor of Savan.
"People are afraid to come into Savan, even the police," he said. "The shots are fired every night. I hear more shots fired in Savan than I did in the Second World War."
Mack Construction built the center, which was designed by DeJongh and Associates, with about $800,000 in federal Community Development Block Grants.
Dean Plaskett, commissioner of the Planning and Natural Resources Department, which administers the CDBG grant program locally, called the center's opening an important step forward for Savan. "This project is an indication of our commitment to the revitalization of this community," he said.
