The operator of the tattered Caneel Bay Resort has hired a Washington lobbying firm with tight connections to President Trump/Carolyn Sugg via Flickr

Hoping a voice friendly to President Trump will be able to convince the Interior Department to extend its management of the Caneel Bay Resort for at least 60 years, CBI Acquisitions has retained a new lobbyist in Washington.

Ballard Partners, whose principal chaired Trump's organization in Florida for the 2016 election and was vice chairman of the president's inaugural committee, will work to get Interior to extend the current Retained Use Estate long past its current September 2023 end.

The future of the Caneel Bay Resort has been up in the air since 2010, when Congress directed the National Park Service to determine whether it made sense to convert the RUE to a more traditional concessions lease. Three years later, the Park Service, after studying which management approach made the most sense for the agency via an environmental assessment, recommended that the operating agreement be redefined as a long-term lease more in line with typical concessions agreements.

But negotiations between the Park Service and CBI's principal, Gary Engle, have failed to produce any concrete results; indeed, Engle told a House committee in 2018 that the talks never were substantive. CBI has maintained that an extension of at least 60 years is necessary to attract $100 million in capital to rebuild the resort.

National Parks Traveler continues to wait for the Park Service to completely fulfill Traveler's Freedom of Information Act request for details of those talks.

Back-to-back hurricanes in September 2017 largely destroyed the Caribbean resort's facilities, and while CBI received $32 million in insurance proceeds, it has not made any substantive efforts to rebuild. Instead, it has offered to walk away from the operation if the federal government would pay it $70 million and hold the company harmless for any environmental damage that might be on the resort's grounds. 

Not only did hurricanes Irma and Maria heavily damage the Caneel Bay Resort, but they also exposed CBI to a $217,416 lawsuit brought by Bluewater Construction, of St. Thomas, stemming from 18 hotel rooms it built in the months leading up to the September 2017 storms but has yet to be paid for. Too, CBI was told early this year that the resort was “grossly underinsured.”

Court documents related to the Bluewater Construction case showed that CBI was underinsured by just about half of what it valued the resort at. CBI was successful in its $32 million claim for damages from Hurricane Irma, which struck on September 6, 2017. But when the company filed a similar $32 million claim for damage from Hurricane Maria, which struck less than two weeks later, Lloyds of London denied the claim on the grounds that the first claim covered the loss from both storms.

“There is no additional damage caused by Hurricane Maria that was not considered in the scope of damages from Hurricane Irma,” the claims management company noted in a September 2018 letter to Engle. In other words, the coverage for Irma would cover impacts from Maria, the claims firm concluded.

Laurance S. Rockefeller in 1956 donated the land on the island of St. John that today makes up Virgin Islands National Park. At the time, he held back a portion for the Caneel Bay Resort. In 1983, the Jackson Hole Preserve, which Rockefeller had established, donated the land to the park; but it came with the RUE agreement that gave the Preserve free use of the property and its facilities for 40 years. At the end of that four-decade period, September 2023, the RUE document dictated that the buildings and their improvements be donated to the Park Service.

CBI Acquisitions acquired the RUE in 2004.

When Rockefeller structured the RUE that allowed the Caneel Bay Resort to be operated for private profit, he inserted a provision into that document that required the resort operator to use and maintain the grounds in a way that is "consistent with the preservation of such outstanding scenic and other features of national significance, and preserve the Premises to the extent feasible in their natural condition for the public benefit, enjoyment, and inspiration..."

But according to initial documents Traveler obtained through its 2018 FOIA request, a 2014 environmental assessment of the Caneel Bay Resort property raised questions of contamination from SVOCs -- semivolatile organic compounds -- often related to pesticides, and arsenic.

"In addition, there are concerns for leachability of SVOCs, arsenic and mercury to groundwater," the report noted.

The surveys also found concentrations of total petroleum hydrocarbons and diesel range organics above acceptable levels set by the Virgin Islands Department of Planning and Natural Resources.

While the assessment called for more extensive testing to determine the extent of these contaminants -- both across the ground surface and to determine depth of contamination -- records Traveler obtained said CBI had refused to allow a contractor for the Park Service to access the grounds to perform further testing.

Since then, Park Service personnel have declined to discuss the status of the environmental condition of the property.

While Caneel Bay Resort remains in tatters, other Caribbean resorts that were damaged by Irma and Maria have rebuilt. A headline in the New York Times early this month noted that, "5 New Standout Resorts in the Caribbean | In the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria, many hoteliers in the Caribbean have regrouped and rebuilt — and are ushering in a new age of hospitality."