The developer behind a proposed 80-unit Planned Area Development on St. Thomas urged residents interested in buying one of the homes or townhouses to start work now on qualifying for affordable housing programs his company hopes to partner with to ensure the community can meet its goal of property ownership for Virgin Islanders.
That was a key message at a wide-ranging public hearing Monday that lasted more than two hours and covered a host of questions regarding The Residences at 340 North, the proposed development with two styles of 3-bedroom townhouses — 28 at 20-feet wide and 36 at 24-feet wide — and 16 single-family detached homes on 11.16 acres in Estate St. Joseph and Rosendahl overlooking Magens Bay.
St. Thomas native Ajani Corneiro, a civil engineer and the owner of A.C. Development, said while his company “is working extremely, extremely hard with local agencies and reaching out to every possible department that has three or four letters to ask how they can apply their current programs or policies to assist us in getting home buyers in these units,” the public must do its part as well.
“The whole goal is to have a mix or a myriad of options for people to be able to get in at different price points. We’re not trying to just isolate or target a certain income bracket” but rather create “a mixed-use development or a mixed-income development that is the best approach for a sustainable community,” said Corneiro.
“This is a collaborative effort from the community, not just us as the developer, because our goal … is to help our community get into housing that’s desperately needed. I would say that this is a group effort to make sure that we are as impactful as possible,” he said.
Those programs currently include the First Time Homebuyers Program under the V.I. Housing Finance Authority, and the V.I. Slice Moderate Income Homeownership Program under the Economic Development Authority.
“We want to help people get qualified, help them understand what it means to apply, get a mortgage and become a homeowner. So, we’ll be pushing out more data in the next few weeks on that, but I would urge people to look up these current programs and talk to these program departments … to get the exact requirements,” said Corneiro.
The project is still in the vetting process, and the public has until March 31 to submit comments to Territorial Planner Leia LaPlace at [email protected]. They may also request the files submitted in application for the project, and a recording of Monday’s hearing. More than 120 people attended the meeting, held virtually via Teams, and their comments will also be summarised and included in the recommendation report that will be prepared by the Department of Planning and Natural Resources’ Division of Comprehensive and Coastal Zone Planning. It will then go to the V.I. Legislature, which will consider the development in a Committee of the Whole public hearing yet to be scheduled, after which the senators will vote on the matter.
If approved, Corneiro said construction will be in three phases, to ensure the least disruption to nearby neighbors and that building meets demand, with the first phase ideally starting in late summer with a completion goal sometime in the first quarter of 2026.
“We want to build as fast and sell as fast as possible, but since we’re trying to enroll multiple parties, agencies, trying to get these [affordable housing] programs applied to this development, we hope the first phase would be an 18-month buildout and sell process,” he said, adding that in an ideal world — no big recessions, no new wars — the entire project will be complete in three years.
There’s no question that affordable housing is badly needed on St. Thomas, where many Virgin Islanders have been locked out of the market by rising costs and a scarcity of options for moderate-income earners, but some who commented at Monday’s public hearing were skeptical that 340 North would not fall prey to mainland buyers looking for investment properties to rent to tourists through agencies such as Airbnb.
However, deed restrictions and a homeowners’ association that will govern the community can help address those issues, and government programs for qualified buyers have their own restrictions on the ability to rent, or to resell without penalty, Corneiro and his team noted.
A.C. Development is also working to ensure the homes easily qualify for government funding programs, Corneiro said. For example, the project will utilize Insulated Concrete Form technology — walls of poured concrete, versus concrete block, that can withstand winds of 250 mph — energy efficient appliances, low consumption fixtures, and sloped roofs with no overhangs both for proper water collection and to prevent them catching wind and coming off in a storm.
The aim is to build a community that is “net-zero ready,” meaning it will be designed for the easy integration of renewable energy systems such as solar panels and could be completely off the grid, Corneiro said.
Addressing concerns about water runoff from the steeply sloping property, project engineer Thomas Miner of Frederick Ward Associates said stormwater will divert from upstream and the site itself to two guts that run along the west and east sides of the property that will also have three underground stormwater facilities to attenuate the impact from a 25-year flood event, which is above the industry standard of 10 years, he added.
“This underground storage system could also provide additional rainwater harvesting, whether for the individual cisterns that service each house or during a fire they could also be used for a fire suppression,” Miner said, adding that they will have approximately the same volume as 10 swimming pools.
As for wastewater, and concerns it could affect nearby properties, Miner said each unit will have its own septic system with a capacity of about 1,500 gallons, that will then connect to a secondary sub-surface treatment system that will include UV light treatment and sand filtration before the gray water is dispersed.
The property — located on parcels 4I and 4J Rem, currently zoned R-2, in Estate St. Joseph and Rosendahl — would be accessed using Rosendahl Drive to the north and Gooseberry Lane to the south, which prompted concerns about congestion from some residents at the hearing, especially given that the latter is an estate road that is just 10 or so feet wide. However, Corneiro said the development has enough right of way to widen it by 10 feet in certain sections, which will also benefit nearby property owners.
Improvements to the access from Rosendahl Drive, which is a public road, will require coordination with the Public Works Department, he said, adding, “We have attempted hard to get them to respond, but we are going to actually have to knock on some doors and do what we can” to get approvals for the work.
Inside 340 North, each unit will have room for two vehicles, with an additional 35 parking spaces scattered throughout the community, said Corneiro. The property will also feature walking trails, urban gardens to encourage food sustainability, a playground, and open spaces to relax or gather, but no commercial entities such as a gym or other business, he said.
Per the rules for a Planned Area Development, which LaPlace characterized as a “rare” application in the Virgin Islands, 35 percent of the densely wooded property will be developed, with five percent becoming active open space and 60 percent remaining as passive open space.
As for the million-dollar question, price, Corneiro said it is too early to say, and will depend upon the buy-in of government agencies and programs.
“This is exactly why we need collaboration from everyone for this to work well, because if our goal is to create housing for Virgin Islanders, everyone needs to be involved” and see that the right policies and the right programs are applied to support home ownership opportunities, he said.
To learn more, visit www.340north.com, email [email protected], find The Residences at 340 North on Facebook, and 340North on Instagram.
