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Concerns and complaints against AC Development /new development CCVP003-25. To: Ms. Leila LaPalce-Matthew, DPNR Date: March 27, 2025 The following is for the Legislative Public Hearing and comment from the AC Developers We are Noel M. Lewis and Anna L. Connor-Lewis and Family, residing at 3-8 and 4F St. Joseph and Rosendahl. Our property is adjacent to 4i and 4J. As Virgin Islanders we have enjoyed living in our home and in this great peaceful location for over 44 years and so do have concerns about this development. I am a retired Virgin Islands Housing Authority Executive employee, along with my family educated in various fields of professional and historic areas and so have much VI interest. We fully understand the housing and ongoing development needs of our people, the residents of the Virgin Islands. Our concerns are listed below. Number 1. We commend the AC Development, North 340 group, for their insightful interest and thoughtful desire to address and attempt to increase housing and homeownership opportunities. We also understand that based on their land acquisition of the Smalls and Rhymer’s property 4I and 4 J their vision is understandable. However, this development should be reduced in its scale designated on parcels 4I and 4J for several reasons. The primary ones are listed below. A. Their Wastewater System. All such sewage systems fail, even with the best of plans if not well maintained. I have learned and experienced, from installation and monitoring their use that Waste Water Systems in such large scale projects that they will ultimately cause problems to the residents and neighborhoods in the surrounding area. AC Development, a purchaser of such a system, cannot guarantee 365 days of sustained non-failure and required maintenance failures even after the best of plans. If you review and survey the residents who reside in the surrounding neighborhoods where such present systems exist you will get many negative complaints especially against what was originally promised. Inquire of residents of Pineapple Beach, Dorothia, Tutu Valley and other systems on St. Thomas, Calabash Boom STJ. Each today with annual failing odor problems and financial repair/replacement concerns. We know that even private septic tank systems fail if not maintained. So the construction of 80 homes, office and other common area structures with restrooms will be a great dauting challenge for all new residents and mandated with membership fees to what we know will be wastewater treatment failures. B. No Traffic Study has been done. As a resident, all St. J & R residents can explain their dread on their current drive to and from work each day. Unless we leave our homes, using Valley Road (Route 409 ) north or south heading east, west or especially south to Charolette Amalie, it is a nightmare at times. To reduce our stress our driving requires a very early departure. Not to mention other contributing factors causing delays, especially parents with children. Any professional traffic study will show that the hours from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. is a terrible crawling experience. Any accident or breakdown of a vehicle has caused significant delays since it is only one uncared for road. Also, entrance onto Skyline drive from all accessing roads are dangerous, accidents have happen. No traffic lights exist. Finally, the last two large communities built called Grand View and Lovelund, near Magens Bay has contributed to the growing traffic congestion. These projects are all in the same area. The rebuilding of the Donoe community will also be a further addition to our traffic burden. C. Emergency vehicles, lack of disposition of garbage collection system, adding road repair and service to this new community with many existing poor service by the government. Fire and police and their operators, have difficulty locating north side homes especially at night, especially due to poor street lighting. Even though a new community may do better, all roads lack signages and are lacking in repair and drainage. This large project will add to the frustration of present poor services by government agencies. Based on our problems listed above we should not be adding to our uncorrected problem. We want homeownership opportunity, but we do not want clutter, overcrowding, and a greater increase to our existing stressful frustrations. Increase sewage and foul odor due to a sewage plant failure, traffic jams, accident prone streets and lact of multiple roads when blocking problems arise. Recommendations. We assume the developers have the best intentions but a project of eight units (80+ other common areas) is too extreme for our small residential area. We also know the developers may have invested in the purchasing of the land and has determined to gain support from the government for this project. However, in consideration of their interest and investments we should encourage their ideas to meet our variety of needs with consideration of our government plans or vision to meet our greater needs. Some of our recommendations are> 1. Disapproved this proposed development or significantly reduce the size of the project to a lesser number of units to a reasonable number of units to no more than 25 %. Based on the above and other factors. 2. They (AC Developer) should negotiate with the government to spread out the balance (75%) of their development to unused government land that will serve other communities. The government should be excited to negotiate such offerings, transfer ownership at a minimum or no cost with this developer to protect their investment. Therefore, allowing such homeownership opportunities to spread out over a greater portion of St. Thomas. This will allow a better balance for new development usage and not place such a large burden on just one community, ST. J&R. This model can become adaptable throughout the Virgin Island based on a greater vision that serves our people as they can reside in many communities. 3. The government should offer land in a value exchange. 4. Construction to build this community on 4i and 4J will be quite expensive based on the terrain and so a offer by the government for land use elsewhere may be a cost saving to the developers if they are given a variety of land choices. Thank You. Noel M. and Anna L. Connor-Lewis 340 998-1133