St. Croix Coastal Zone Management commissioners approved both a rebuild and hardening of Christiansted’s historic Alexander Theater and a reverse osmosis water purification unit in back-to-back decision meetings Tuesday evening.
The theater’s restoration will include a new, two-story addition that will house a lobby, classrooms, offices, two restaurants, a generator and pump room and storage spaces. A third-floor “utility penthouse” will house air conditioning equipment, and a reinforced cistern will also be built on the site. The facility will also meet Federal Emergency Management Agency safe room standards. After noting that the project was discussed in detail during a public hearing in October, committee chair Kai Nielsen asked representatives from the St. Croix Foundation for Community Development, which is spearheading the restoration, about its long-term maintenance plan.
“I’ve found this in every project that I’ve looked for, for the government of the Virgin Islands,” he said. “They want to build these grandiose facilities with state-of-the-art this and state-of-the-art that, but they have no maintenance at all. You cannot build these big facilities and cannot maintain them — it makes no sense.”
Foundation Vice President Haley Cutler said the maintenance budget will be “multipronged.”
“So when it is actually serving as a performing and cultural arts center — and we’re partnering with organizations who are hosting after-school programs, summer camps, as well as performances — there will be … performance rental income,” she said. “And then it’ll also be available for private events, so that’ll be part of the rental income.”
Cutler added that the foundation will also be seeking operating grants for the theater that can fund maintenance as well.
“And then during its ‘gray sky’ use as a safe room, all the costs for operating the safe room are … part of a contracted relationship with VITEMA,” she said. “And there is compensation for the use of the facility for that purpose, and there is a cost-share agreement that would go into place in terms of whose responsibilities maintaining the emergency functionalities of the shelter operations are — things like the generator and stuff like that.”
Commissioners later voted on a St. Croix Renaissance Group plan to install a reverse osmosis water purification system on the island’s southern shore. Environmental engineer Benjamin Keularts, from the consultant firm Tysam Tech, said the plan builds on an existing, damaged seawater intake system.
“The intake structure is there — with existing pumps that are damaged, they’re beyond repair — but the piping infrastructure is there,” he said. “And setup of a saltwater RO system that’s containerized should be very quick and not impact any sort of green space.”
The project’s first phase is expected to produce 200 gallons per minute of “double-pass” water meant for industrial use and 40 gallons per minute of “single pass” water that is “relatively equivalent to Safe Drinking Water Act potable water standards,” Keularts said. He added that the VI Water and Power Authority currently can’t meet the demand for “ultra-pure double-pass” water needed for industrial applications and food and beverage production.
Both projects were approved unanimously.
