Community meetings were held in mid-May by the U.S. Virgin Islands Port Authority (VIPA) to discuss government plans to partner with a private entity (four are left in the race) to improve two gateways: Henry E. Rohlsen Airport (STX) on St. Croix and Cyril E. King Airport (STT) on St. Thomas.

The authority is an autonomous agency that manages STX and STT plus 14 public seaport facilities in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI). As a recipient of grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation, VIPA must maintain regular communication with the officials of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which governs the aviation operations of the territory.

VIPA has decided to use a public-private partnership (P3) model to finance the airport upgrades for reasons that were outlined by VIPA’s Executive Director Carlton Dowe during a series of community meetings to emphasize process transparency. He stressed that using P3 “was not the privatization of the islands’ airports” and neither was it going to follow the same P3 method as Puerto Rico.

Privatization Versus P3

“Often we misconstrue a public-private partnership and privatization,” he said. “The definition of privatization is the transfer of a business, industry or service from public to private ownership. In this instance, we are not transferring any ownership, and neither our FAA rights nor regulations we have to abide by.”

As such, VIPA will remain the owner of both STX and STT airports and will continue to be the FAA Part 139 Certificate Holder, remaining eligible to receive FAA grants to improve the airports. Referring to COVID, Dowe said: “We would not have been able to survive without FAA grants.”

But he added that “all of us must know, what we don’t know,” in other words being judicious about when to bring in outside professional help, especially when delivering on infrastructure upgrades or new-builds. “A lot of this federal stuff is highly regulated,” he added.

VIPA’s Executive Director went on to detail exactly what is being planned for the island’s two gateways, where the differences were compared to Puerto Rico, and details of the four bidders.

INVESTOR INSIGHTS