This is more like a shot in the foot for St. Croix, which, by the way, has suffered loss of tourism traffic in recent years due to over-inflated and under-informed hype about crime and the drop in cruise ship traffic.

St. Croix has crime. All islands have crime. All communities have crime, to different degrees. But lets compare apples to apples. St. Croix and St. Thomas are 2 islands 40 miles apart, both part of the Territory of the US Virgin Islands, with almost identical populations. St. Thomas had more than twice as many murders last year than St. Croix. St. Thomas suffers from violent and petty crime against tourists and residents, yet it is still one of the most visited cruise ship destinations in the world. So crime is NOT the reason cruise ship and tourism traffic dropped in St. Croix. The continual repetition of this unfounded rumour has more to do with it than any actual crime.

As for the announced Wyndham/Golden partnership, I hope Wyndham did better due diligence with this project than they did when they hired a “spa consultant” to build the Journeys Spa at the Wyndham Sugar Bay resort in St. Thomas several years ago. The first contractor stiffed the resort and his subcontractors and walked away with hundreds of thousands, if not millions. There was a plethora of information in the public domain, easily obtainable with a simple internet search indicating this “spa consultant” was wanted for check fraud all over the country and had done this same trick many times before. But Wyndham handed him a multi-million dollar contract and paid him, with out checking up first.

Paul Golden has a past filled with financial and legal trouble. An initial background investigation done on behalf of the VI Public Finance Authority in 2003 concluded that “sufficient number of red flags have been raised to warrant withdrawal” from any business dealings with him. And yet the VI Government has not withdrawn. And now Wyndham has joined the circus. Lets hope they realize their mistake before ending up with egg on their face again.

St. Croix needs more sound sustainable development, but compromising our laws, our rules and our beauty for the sake of ANY development however poorly planned and detrimental is a recipe for disaster. Shot in the arm? Continuing on this road could be a shot in the head.

For more background see:
http://www.csted.com/buchanan_ingersoll_report.htm
http://stcroixblog.massagestcroix.com/index.php?s=Paul+Golden
http://www.thejohnnycakefiles.com/golden.html