After sitting on the federal government’s back burners through the change from the Bush to Obama administrations, a proposal to swap V.I. National Park land on St. John for land on St. Croix is moving forward.
“It looks like now we’ve got traction,” said John Garrison of the Trust for Public Land on Tuesday.
The Trust has a contract to buy 115 acres on St. Croix. In a complicated deal, all 115 acres of that land will be swapped for undetermined amount of acreage out of a 55-acre plot at Catherineberg.
“It’s going to be acreage of comparable value,” Garrison.
The St. Croix land will become a national historic park in Estate Grange related to Alexander Hamilton. Joel Tutein, superintendent of all national park facilities on St. Croix, said he expects a study determining the feasibility of making the land a park should be done by summer 2011.
He said the study will also look at adjacent properties to determine if they should be included in the Alexander Hamilton Boyhood Home National Historic Site.
Garrison said the Trust signed a contract about two years ago to buy the St. Croix property for about $4 million. Additionally, he said that some of that acreage could be retained by the local government for agriculture purposes, but nothing’s been decided.
The deal has been in the making since 2007. Last week, officials from the local government, the National Park Service and the Interior Department met on St. Thomas to discuss the proposal.
“We’re all moving in a direction where we are recommitted, we’re re-energized to try and make sure the land is available for residents of St. John so we can build a public school there for the children of the community,” said Anthony Baubata, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for Insular Affairs, during his visit to the territory in November 2009.
The construction of the school is a long way off. The first step is the signing of a memorandum of agreement between the local government and the National Park Service. Park Superintendent Mark Hardgrove said he hopes to have that task out of the way next month.
Both he and Garrison anticipated that an environmental assessment of the property in Catherineberg will take about a year to complete.
The Legislature has already approved a bill allowing for the addition of grades 10, 11 and 12 on St. John. Currently, Julius E. Sprauve School educates students through grade 9, with public high school students taking the ferry to St. Thomas for classes. Sprauve School sits in a busy and congested area with significant noise issues. The island’s other school, Guy Benjamin School, goes only through sixth grade. While there are some in the St. John community who do not want to see Guy Benjamin School closed, others want to combine both elementary schools and add the high school.
In his Monday press release, Gov. John deJongh Jr. also spoke about the possibility of using the buildings that now house Sprauve School for other purposes. He said it had potential for both tourism and agriculture uses.
The Estate Grange property was owned by Hamilton’s aunt and uncle, James and Ann Lytton. The home was built in 1753, and Hamilton lived there with his mother Rachel and brother James from about age 10 to about 17. He then sailed off to what became the United States and served as the nation’s first treasury secretary. The Estate Grange property is now owned by an Armstrong family trust.
