Spring 2021 Issue - 48

" It's a lot less expensive long term to build appropriately, so that when these catastrophes do
occur, the buildings are resilient. " -BOB JACKSON, JACKSON DEVELOPMENT COMPANY

St. Thomas
U.S. Virgin Islands

A ULI Advisory Services Panel Report
August 25-30, 2019

Advisory Services

A ULI Advisory Services Panel Report

its larger strategic recommendations-including
the value of using public/private partnerships with
developers-influenced the Donoe project.
" You can leverage the private development community to get projects that are greater than the sum
of their parts, " says Rachal, who describes himself as
" a big fan of director Graham's strategy and replacing
older stock of housing with newer projects. "
The housing authority sought price quotations.
Having developed more than 17,300 rental housing
units in 17 states as well as the District of Columbia,
Pennrose pursued the job and eventually secured a
larger deal to develop a total of 700-plus public housing units on St. Thomas and two projects on St. Croix.

Ivy Dench-Carter, Pennrose's senior vice president of development, says she feels a personal
as well as a professional connection to the Donoe
project, having lived in St. Thomas as a child and
frequently visited as an adult. " My father is buried
in St. Thomas and my aunt, unfortunately, lived in
St. Thomas during hurricanes Irma and Maria, " she
explains. That made Dench-Carter particularly eager
to help improve housing for the islands' residents.
" We've worked with tons of housing authorities, "
Dench-Carter says. " What has made the partnership
with the housing authority and Pennrose work is
that we had the same goals in mind at the inception
of the project. We listened to one another and we
heard what their goals were for redevelopment of
public housing units. "
" We wanted signature projects, " Graham says.
" They [Pennrose] also believed in signature projects. "
According to Dench-Carter, Hunt Capital Partners,
a minority partner in Pennrose, introduced the development firm to Bob Jackson, whose St. Thomas-
based Jackson Development Company already had
extensive experience building affordable housing
in the Virgin Islands. It was a collaboration that
Graham says he also encouraged.
Jackson Development, in turn, brought to the
table crucial expertise when it came to building in
a territory where construction expenses are high
because most building supplies must be shipped
1,100 miles (1,770 km) from the U.S. mainland, and
skilled construction labor and subcontractors are
scarce.
Another key ULI piece of advice, according to
Rachal, was to use more " creative " financial tools.
Along those lines, the public/private partnership
was able to obtain funding from a diverse combination of sources, including federal Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery money, bank
financing, and equity financing obtained through
low-income housing tax credits.

Christiansted
St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
June 24-29, 2018

A commercial street in the territory's
capital city, Charlotte Amalie.

LAURA MAGRUDER/ULI

Hurricane Resistance and Sustainability

48

U R B A N LA N D

AFeature_Kiger_SP21.indd 48

In the nearly two decades during which he has been
developing projects in the Virgin Islands, Jackson
says that he has come to appreciate how vital it is
to build with hurricanes in mind. Concrete construction, hurricane-resistant roofs, and windows and

SPRING 2021

4/1/21 8:41 AM
Spring 2021 Issue

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Spring 2021 Issue
