USVI Airport Modernization Project Leaps Forward as Global Players Descend on Territory For Industry Forum, Facility Tours

Jet bridges will be part of the modernized airports in St. Thomas and St. Croix. By GETTY IMAGES

Wednesday's gathering of over 60 professionals from the aviation, construction and finance sectors at the Cyril E. King Airport on St. Thomas was hailed as a success by officials from the Virgin Islands Port Authority (VIPA), the Department of Tourism, and by Governor Albert Bryan Jr. himself.

The industry forum was a key step in the move towards a public-private partnership that would allow for the development of both the Cyril E. King facility and St. Croix’s Henry Rohlsen Airport. The plan, according to Larry Belinsky, managing director of Frasca & Associates LLC, who is consulting on the project, is to have one operator lease the terminals of both airports, with agreements to conduct and manage both airfield and landside operations.

As VIPA Executive Director Carlton Dowe took pains to note several times during the forum and the press briefing that followed, the authority, and thus by extension the government of the Virgin Islands, would continue to own the infrastructure outright. Mr. Dowe also underscored that significant decisions or plans of the eventual operators would have to be ratified by VIPA’s governing board before they can be implemented. VIPA would also retain the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) operating certificate for the airports, meaning that both facilities would remain eligible for FAA grant funding, and the operating partner would not need to undergo a lengthy FAA approvals process.

Officials were buoyed by the numbers in attendance at the forum. With industry players from Mexico, Canada, the United States and Europe, including representatives of 9 airport operators all converged in the USVI to inspect the territory’s two airports, it signaled that “interest level is high,” according to Mr. Belinksy. Present also were terminal developers, contractors, architects and investment bankers, which Governor Bryan noted meant that some people came to the forum for networking purposes — representing one aspect of the complex undertaking of developing and running an airport, hoping to meet others with different industry expertise with whom they could partner in order to submit a successful joint proposal.