Rep. Stacy Plaskett says 60-year lease for Caneel Bay Resort is best for St. John/Fred Hsu, Wikipedia Creative Commons

U.S. Rep. Stacey Plaskett has written her constituents to defend her support of extending the lease of Virgin Islands National Park's Caneel Bay Resort for 60 years, long after Laurance S. Rockefeller had intended for it to be turned over to the National Park Service, but questions into why a concessions lease hasn't been hashed out the past eight years remain unanswered.

Mr. Rockefeller in 1983 crafted a Retained Use Estate agreement with the Interior Department that gave 150 acres of land on the northwestern edge of the island of St. John in the Caribbean to the Park Service but which allowed the resort he had built there to remain in private operation for 40 years, through September 2023. The agreement, now held by a private equity firm with global interests, also did not require any payments to the Park Service.

In 2010, Congress told the Park Service to consider turning that "RUE" into a more typical concessions agreement when it expired. While negotiations got underway then between the Park Service and CBI Acquisitions, which assumed the RUE in 2004, nothing was finalized.

This past December, with the $600+-a-night resort heavily damaged from hurricanes Irma and Maria, Rep. Plaskett introduced legislation to extend the RUE for 60 years with a requirement that CBI pay the federal government a 1.2 percent fee on its gross revenues. Annual revenues for CBI are around $65 million, according to the congresswoman, which would place the fee at around $780,000 a year.

Across the National Park System, according to staff in the agency's Washington headquarters, concession fees average around 7.5 percent.

The long-term deal for CBI, Rep. Plaskett has said, is needed to help the resort get back on its feet.

While Rep. Plaskett's legislation quickly passed out of the Federal Lands Subcommittee and then the House Natural Resources Committee, albeit with language that replaced that 1.2 percent fee with one reflecting "fair market value," questions remain around the deal.  

In a constituent letter emailed Friday morning, the Democrat representing the U.S. Virgin Islands attacked the National Park Service, saying the agency "often neglects to work with and support the greatest resource: we, the people of the Virgin Islands."

In the letter, Rep. Plaskett repeated claims by Gary D. Engle, CEO of Stoneleigh Capital, the private equity firm that controls CBI Acquisitions, that the Park Service has dawdled in talks aimed at reaching a long-term lease agreement for the resort and that's why the RUE extension is now needed.

"After agreeing with the ownership of Caneel Bay to an extension of the use of the park, and commencement of the lease agreement process, NPS headquarters has, with no explanation, dragged its feet for over five years to negotiate terms and complete various assessments so the resort can continue operations," she wrote.

For his part, Mr. Engle, when pressed earlier this month by U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, to explain what the sticking points were in the negotiations, told the House Federal Lands Subcommittee that, "(W)e never really got into a substantive discussion."

Those statements contradict the view of Jo Pendry, a former concessions chief for the National Park Service who went to St. John in 2010 to negotiate a concessions agreement.

"During my tenure with the NPS, I and other NPS employees were engaged in negotiations with the owner of CBI Acquisitions, specifically Gary Engle and his attorneys, in order to implement a public law authorizing a sole source lease between the United Stated and CBI Acquisitions, the holder of the RUE at Caneel Bay," Ms. Pendry said in an email to the Traveler. "The negotiations covered all aspects of the lease including the terms, rent, and NPS oversight. At the time of my retirement (in 2015), negotiations were ongoing."

What has transpired since Ms. Pendry left the Park Service is up for debate. National Park Service personnel so far have been unable to tell the Traveler what has held up the negotiations, and the congresswoman's office has not responded to Traveler's inquiries.

Rep. Plaskett told The Virgin Islands Daily News that putting the resort lease out to bid for a concessions contract now would simply push back the resort's reopening. 

“Caneel Bay has been in negotiations with the National Park Service for years,” she told the newspaper. “Putting it out to a concession bid is going to take an additional number of years.

"... It takes two years to build it back,” she said. “If we are doing a concession, it takes five to eight years for them to finalize that.”

Rep. Plaskett did not address the Park Service's recommendation, in a draft 2013 environmental assessment, that the RUE be converted to a lease agreement, in large part to protect the archaeological, cultural, and natural resources on the land on which the resort sits, according to the newspaper.

Under the RUE, "(T)here is a risk of damaging resources at the resort since NPS would not be involved in the management of the resort before the expiration of the RUE. The RUE owner could undertake construction or other actions that may result in resource damage or loss," the 2013 document said.

"Culturally, Caneel Bay contains historic resources, and it reflects Rockefeller’s vision of a close community of man and nature," the EA added. "It also contains numerous archaeological resources and is under consideration by NPS for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as an historic district."

Rep. Plaskett told the newspaper that there are other RUEs in the National Park System. One of those, for Cavallo Point -- the Lodge at the Golden Gate, was signed in 2010. The operation received a 60-year lease due to the hefty amount of funds (more than $100 million) that investors were required to put into the facility that was in a state of disrepair.

Hurricane damage at Caneel Bay is expected to be covered to a certain degree, if not entirely, by insurance held on the resort facilities. 

CBI Acquisitions, according to public records, spent $330,000 in 2017 lobbying Congress specifically on the RUE.

In her letter to constituents, the congresswoman took exception to charges that she was not looking out for the best interests of St. John.

"So, to say that I am somehow beholden to interests other than those of the people of the Virgin Islands and to the interests of facilitating an environment conducive to capital investment and economic growth in our community is patently untrue," she wrote.  "My conversation with our local government, the hotel association, and employees of the park drove the introduction of the legislation. That my legislation to extend the existing RUE is intended to favor an interest other than that of my constituents who are out of work, and the broader economic recovery of St. John and the territory after Hurricanes Irma and Maria are not only false, it is offensive."