Home News Local news Home Depot Hoping for Early Fall Opening

Home Depot Hoping for Early Fall Opening

0

The new Home Depot will open toward the end of the first phase of construction, officials say.The 250,000-square-foot Island Crossing Shopping Center in Estate Barren Spot is about 75 percent complete, and the new Home Depot that will anchor the mall should open early this fall, according to the mall developers and Home Depot.

Caribbean Development Partners (CDP) is the V.I. company developing the shopping center.

“People should look to see a job trailer set up in the next month or so where they will be accepting applications, not only for running the store, but stocking and preparing the store to open,” said CDP Vice President Josh Tate on Tuesday.

The mall is being built in phases, with Home Depot opening toward the end of the first phase, Tate said. CDP is responsible for building the mall as a whole, for bringing in utilities and road connections, and for building the pad where Home Depot will build its store, Tate said.

In December, Home Depot accepted the pad, executed a 20-year lease and began constructing the store, said Tate.

At the moment, there are about 75 local contractors working on the job, reflecting 100 to 200 construction jobs any given day, he said. Once the entire shopping center is fully developed, it should employ the equivalent of more than 275 full-time jobs, including all of its stores, maintenance personnel and so forth, Tate said.

Major construction should be complete by the end of June, and a grand opening is tentatively scheduled for around Sept. 15, Tate said. Home Depot spokesman Craig Fishel confirmed the store was scheduled to open “late in the second half of 2011,” but said Tuesday it was too early to be confident of the specific date.

CDP is a partnership comprised of several individuals who are connected with large stateside capital investment firms, including James River Capital, Stern Brothers Real Estate Finance and Boston Capital, according to documents filed with the V.I. Economic Development Authority by CDP.

Island Crossing is the first beneficiary of a new economic development tool called tax increment financing, or TIF, championed by Gov. John deJongh Jr. and passed into law by the Legislature in 2008.

Used in nearly every state and territory to boost development in economically underserved areas, TIF gives private developers public money to help defray their costs, paying for it by pledging projected future gains in tax revenues from the current improvements that will create those future gains.
The theory is that if the public funding makes a project feasible that would otherwise not happen, the increased tax revenues it will bring in can justify and, through TIF, actually finance the upfront public expense, bootstrapping economic development.

In this instance, the developer is liable for the bonds if the tax revenues somehow don’t appear, theoretically protecting the government from any risk of losing money on the deal. So even though the government is paying for part of the development, it never actually incurs any loss of tax revenues on its books.

The Public Finance Authority and Economic Development Authority approved TIF financing up to $25 million in TIF bond financing. CDP’s TIF application estimates $38 million in investment from the mall’s tenants and a total financial outlay of around $71 million in both private and public funds.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here