GlobeVest Takes Down Website At First Sign Of Public Scrutiny – But Not Before We Captured Their Promo Panel On the Sports Complex (Updated With Feasibility Study)
Somebody better tell GlobeVest, LLC that we’re not as dumb as they’ve been led to believe.
GlobeVest LLC is the Denver, Colorado based “development group” that burst onto the scene last week as the latest player in a “public private partnership” in the Virgin Islands, in charge of managing a $350 million sports complex on the island of St. Croix.
Until two days ago, they had a glitzy but shallow website with lots of pretty pictures and very little substance. People started looking at the site, and discussions began across the airwaves about the fact that once again, we were planning to partner with a group that has NO COMPLETED PROJECTS OF THE TYPE THEY ARE PLANNING FOR THE VI. IN FACT, THEY SHOWED NO COMPLETED PROJECTS AT ALL.
If you want to see it for yourself, you’re too late. Because suddenly, the website is gone!
But not quickly enough…
Here on CIF you can see the information that was posted on the site before it mysteriously disappeared showing their promotion of the St. Croix project. And there, looking expansive as ever, is your Governor, John P. deJongh, Jr., with open arms – welcoming yet another inexperienced “partner” into the Territory to siphon of yet more money for a project that meets everyone’s needs except ours.
This is the promotional panel that appeared on the GlobeVest LLC website about the St. Croix Sports complext project before the site was taken down earlier this weekend. A full size version is attached at the end of this article.
So let’s just get this out of the way now. Before the web watchers that troll this site start in on “negativity” and all that other blather they like to write whenever we question shady actions by this Administration – hear this.
We have had enough of deals that don’t benefit anyone except the investors and the chosen few in the Virgin Islands Government.
We have had enough of alliances with unproved organizations who overpromise and under deliver and, without fail, require a financial investment from our monetarily strapped government to bless us with their presence.
We have had enough of projects presented as a fait-accompli with no public hearings, no public input and no regard for its actual impact on the community. The last time we checked, there weren’t any public petitions for more tennis courts on St. Croix – but our world class runners have to train on track and field facilities that are little better than the dirt roads we are forced to drive on – and here’s no track facility included in this project.
We have had enough of painting the rosy pictures of community benefit, hoards of new tourists and expanded business benefits that ignore the degenerate conditions we are forced to live with daily, that have yet to result in any sustainable benefit for the local members of this community and that ultimately benefit into perpetuity with tax breaks and other exemptions.
And we have really had enough of people ignoring what we’ve all learned during the past six years, and not realizing that we recognize a problem when we see it, and will take the actions, and do the investigation we feel is necessary to assure that the next group that lands on these shores has more than the interests of the egregious elite at heart.
To Mr. James Sutherland, the President and CEO of GlobeVest (who just happens to be a “person of color”) you too must understand.
This is no way to try to sell your story to the Virgin Islands. We don’t know what the Administration has told you but our recent experience with initiatives that are touted as being in our best interest has not fostered an environment of trust. And actions like taking down your website moments after you and your organization begin to face public scrutiny add to the mistrust of which we speak.
And really, don’t bother to put the site back up – any information you revise from its original information will be viewed as invalid and untrue by the community you’re supposed to be convincing.
To the Legislature, who must approve the $25 million investment of local funds required to launch this project, keep this in mind. We sit now after weeks of substantive inaction on our financial crisis in no better position to address issues than we did six months ago. Your capitulation to the increase in the gross receipts tax with no other measures in place, long or short term,  to restart an economy that hasn’t even begun to feel the true impact of the Hovensa Refinery closing means that for you to even consider this expenditure is negligent and hopelessly irresponsible.
And yes, we know, this is supposed to be funded by revenues from Diageo – the same “revenue” source being touted as the answer to all our ills – another deal that has been shown to be far less than your Governor tried to lead us to believe.
Much is made of the “misuse of the media” lately – just yesterday by Senate President Ronald Russell who blamed media scrutiny for the “genocide in Rwanda” simply because he’s been nailed for his refusal to release the names of the Senators who misused at least $6.9 million in funds revealed by the most recent audit. (more on this later)
If that alleged “misuse” by this media outlet results in the short-circuiting of yet another lopsided deal this crew is trying to shove in through the back door, then so be it.
The “misuse” on this one has only just begun.
each and every opertunity tht knocks on our door is met with the same scrutiny, its no wonder we have no jobs, we are the only island in the antilies that has less hotel beds now than we did in 1989, once upon a time we could afordthe luxury of this, but hovenzas gone and soonwe will have no choice in what we have to do to raise money. for those yelling follow the money, i only ask to hwos benifit isnot growing with the times? who profits from the same old arguements like those posted above, the same group that protests this so loudly protests any development, why? what i do know is the same people have said the same things for the last 25 years and look at where thats gotten us, when do we take a chance on trying something new?for all your big talk not oneof yousuggests anthing new itsalways the same old dtuff, and we get the same old results, so sure by all means lets keep the delapidated stadium we have by all means lets rule out a sports complex where the people participatingare bg spending athaletes, no i belive yourightwe should keep anyone from useing ground thats not being used now for cultural reasons, keep on thinking that we can exist with no jobs, no positive publisity, and above all no new ideas. crabs in a bucket eventualy die sure the top crabsmay bebetteroff but they die in the end also
Rainman, right on!!!
Everyone else thinks Obama will bail us out….or maybe Chucky will…
Only in the UN can Saudi Arabia be on the HUMAN RIGHTS council, a place where they deny women the right to vote o hols high office.
…vote or hold high office.
Hey, has anyone ever wondered why we don’t here from Michael Springer on these forums?
No, because he is always playing us and ayo.
We need to raise a ruckus and do it loudly. Remember the initial Alpine scam 4 years ago? ALL were allowed to testify FOR the project for hours…..citizens like Stefen Larsen and community environmentalists were give 2 minutes. Same with the now defunct SerinUSA on STJ. A huge mess that the St. Jonians have to live with.
We must be persistent on this corruption.
Review the facts on this site and in the blogs people. This is a group of several consultants taking us for a ride. Anyone EVER see an RFP in the papers on this ‘project’? I never did. Who else was ‘allowed’ to bid on the stadium??? The news reported only Millin-Young and St. Clair Williams did the vetting and awarded the deal to GlobeVest.
Why would you award a huge contract to a company who never has done a project before?
The deal was in the bag from day one. Why GlobeVest LLC was formed to begin with.