The V.I. Territorial Emergency Management Agency can move forward with retrofitting its abandoned Hermon Hill building after the St. Croix Coastal Zone Management Committee found that the federally funded project complies with the territory’s Coastal Zone Management Act.
Once completed, the new building will house an Emergency Operations Center combining VITEMA’s offices and its 911 Emergency Call Center in one facility and “support programs badly needed for federal and local emergency personnel to respond to contemporary disasters,” according to an application package submitted to the Planning and Natural Resources Department. The facility will include safe rooms to house emergency responders during extreme wind events.
VITEMA Director Daryl Jaschen said Tuesday night that the facility has to be able to house 200 people for up to 24 hours during a storm, including support staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and National Guard partners.
“And that’s because they’ll basically have nowhere else to go… but that’s going to be a safe room to get them through those 24 hours while the storm passes,” he said.
The project is still in its design phase, which Jaschen said is almost 30 percent complete. Once construction does begin, Springline Architects principal Gilbert Laban said it would take 20-24 months to build.
Though the retrofit is funded through a FEMA grant, Jaschen told commissioners that the cost to maintain the facility — approximately $280,000 — will be borne locally. Commissioner Aubrey Ruan Jr. wished Jaschen luck in getting the funds from the Virgin Islands government.
Jaschen said VITEMA currently pays two rents. When the agency moves into the new facility, those funds could be redirected toward covering the maintenance costs.
“I think that’s a good approach to the Finance Committee or the finance group, to say… ‘look, I need the money. It’s not in my federal funding,’” he said. “Some projects already may be funded, but this particular project has zero funds in it on the federal side, and that conversation should happen early in the fiscal cycle — even this year, in ‘26, before we start going into ‘27 and ‘28.”
