June letter to VGV Owners
Dear fellow Virgin Grand Villas owner:
We recently participated, as your elected directors, in the summer meeting of the Board of Directors of our owners’ association. The meeting was held by conference call, as the Board has only one in-person meeting per year, which occurs during the annual meeting. (There is also one informal face-to-face workshop to review a proposed budget for the following year, but no action is taken at a workshop).
We are happy to report that electricity rates, while at record high levels, have held steady during the first half of the year, and that barring any major surprises (such as a damaging hurricane), we expect to be on budget for the year.
Posting website
The biggest news since our last report is that the owners’ website for posting units for sale, rental or exchange is now operational. (The website is also the home for the voluntary owners’ directory). As of mid-June, 347 owners had registered for the website, and there were 196 active listings on it, including 92 units offered for rent, 61 units offered for sale, and 19 units offered for exchange. We are all in debt to our Board chair, Teri Castleberry, for the creation of this website. She dealt for more than two years with an often-challenging software vendor, at the request of the Board, and was finally successful in achieving the result that you can now use. For your convenience, we reproduce below the instructions that we sent in May for using the website.
Secure access to the site is provided to Owners registered with MyStarCentral. Please follow the steps below.
I have a MyStarCentral account:
Visit starwoodvactionnetwork.com and click on 'Owner Login' in the upper-left corner of your screen.
Enter your Username or Email and your Password and click 'LOG IN'.
Hover your mouse over 'Owner Quick Links' in the upper-right corner of your screen and select 'MyStarCentral' from the drop down list.
Click on 'Your Owners Association' in the left-hand navigation menu.
Select a 'Westin St. John Resort & Villas - Virgin Grand' unit and click 'View the Details of this Ownership Week'.
Click on 'VGV Owner Posting Board' in the right-hand section of your screen.
I do not have a MyStarCentral account:
Visit starwoodvactionnetwork.com and click on 'Owner Login' in the upper-left corner of your screen.
Click 'REGISTER NOW'.
Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the online form.
Click 'Go directly to the StarCentral homepage'.
Click on 'Your Owners Association' in the left-hand navigation menu.
Select a 'Westin St. John Resort & Villas - Virgin Grand' unit and click 'View the Details of this Ownership Week'.
Click on 'VGV Owner Posting Board' in the right-hand section of your screen.
This will take you to the Association's website where you must read and accept the terms and conditions of the disclosure statement. You will then be taken to the homepage where you can sign up and create your member profile.
Please be aware that you must create a member profile and be logged in to create or view current listings. Just beneath the boxed message on the homepage, there is a link you may click on to view detailed instructions for use of the website. This detailed instruction document and the FAQ page can be accessed without logging in to the website.
There is one tricky part about logging in for the very first time. When you have followed the instructions above and get to the main page for our posting website, you will see this box:
{Instruction Box won't copy...}
If you are registering for the first time on our bulletin board, DO NOT enter your email or password where it says to enter them. Instead, click on the words “New members click here to sign up.” After you have signed up as directed, on return visits to the site you will enter your email and the password that you selected.
Construction at the resort
As you know, quite a lot of construction and refurbishing is taking place on the hotel side of the resort this year. Three hotel room buildings have been gutted and refitted for sale as timeshare units in the new Coral Vista development. The Beach Café is being renovated and will re-open as the new Lemongrass Restaurant & Bar, which, like the Beach Café, will be operated by Starwood. The menu will be similar to that of the Beach Café, but we are told that it will have a more Caribbean flair. Mango Deli will move next to the new Lemongrass Restaurant & Bar, re-opening as The Marketplace at Great Cruz Bay. Both areas will be air-conditioned space. The resort hopes that another restaurant will open above the lobby by some time this winter, where Cruz Bay Prime was previously located. The gate house is being moved to the hotel side of the property. It will be staffed 24 hours a day. On our side of the road, there will be an automated gate arm that can be opened by swiping a room key, and there will also be an intercom at that location so that an operator can open the gate remotely. Renovation of the airport lounge is almost complete, and renovations of the lobby, fitness center, and kids’ club will take place during the late summer and fall.
Sale of reacquired unit weeks
As you know, the Association has acquired several dozen unit weeks as a result of foreclosures and of negotiated settlements with owners who were delinquent in their maintenance fee payments. In order to generate revenue to the Owners Association from these unit weeks, we have now conducted two bargain sales of these unit weeks to existing owners. This spring sale was very successful; we offered 63 unit weeks for sale, and 33 of them were purchased. These sales replace owners who were not paying their maintenance fees with new owners, and therefore help to hold down maintenance fees for all owners. Foreclosure actions are currently pending for 109 unit weeks and may be initiated for additional unit weeks for which liens are in place, and owners locked out, because of non-payment of maintenance fees. Notwithstanding the delinquencies, the percentage of maintenance fees that we actually collect is on a par with that of the other SVO resorts.
Energy costs
We continue to seek ways to reduce energy costs, given the very expensive cost of electricity in the Virgin Islands (currently about 50 cents per kilowatt hour). We have decided against installing solar panels in a ground array, for aesthetic reasons, but at this meeting, we approved the installation of additional photovoltaic (solar) panels on the roofs of the hillside buildings. Starwood is installing similar panels at several locations on its side of the resort. An outside company is providing the cells and installation, and will maintain them, and we will pay it 35 cents per kilowatt hour for the electricity we purchase. Although our new solar panels will account for only 10% of the total amount of electricity to be generated by the project (with the hotel side producing the other 90%), we will receive approximately 18% (based on our current proportionate consumption rate) of the energy that is produced, which results in about a 2.4% cost savings by not purchasing that power from the power company.
The photovoltaic cells that already exist on buildings 41 through 44 and those that will be added to the hillside buildings will not come close to meeting our need for energy. We are continuing to study the desirability of purchasing a co-generation facility to meet most of our needs. One factor for us to consider is that the local utility on St. Thomas is converting its fuel source from diesel fuel to propane, and it expects that the conversion will reduce fuel costs by about 30%. To the extent that this saving is passed along to customers (and not offset by rate increases to cover the cost of conversion), this step could decrease the difference between the cost of electricity purchased from the utility and electricity that the co-generation facility would produce, with the result that it would take longer than the estimated seven years for the co-generation facility to pay for itself. Another factor for us to take into account is the siting of the co-generation facility. As we reported after the annual meeting in March, two sites are under consideration: one on the hotel side of the property, and one in the yard behind buildings 43 and 44. From our perspective as your elected directors, the former would be preferable, but we we will not support the project unless we are convinced that occupants of those buildings will not hear noise from the equipment. A possible advantage of locating the facility on the hotel side of the property is that it will generate waste heat, which could in principle be harvested for the hotel laundry and for some of its heating and air conditioning. However, Starwood would have to invest in the infastructure in order to use the heat. We have asked Starwood to consider whether it is interested in using the heat. No decision on purchasing the co-generation equipment will be made before our next meeting in November.
Walls in Buildings 41 and 42
As you will recall, the vast majority of owners in buildings 41 and 42 would like us to construct a wall to bisect the large upstairs room into two separate bedrooms. The Management Company has advised that this would require, for any particular unit, the unanimous consent (or at least affirmative non-objection) of every owner of that unit. The owners have now been polled by email and mail. At least one objection was registered for each of these units: 4111, 4112, 4113, 4114, and 4213. No objection was interposed by an owner of units 4110, 4115, 4210, 4211, 4212, 4214, or 4215. However, for each of these units, 6 to 10 owners have not responded to the mail or email. Starwood is going to try to contact by telephone the owners who have not responded. A wall will be built, at no additional expense to the owners, in any of these units for which all owners can be reached and none objects to its construction.
Minor matters
We remind owners that smoking is prohibited on the property, including in your units and on your terraces, except as permitted at designated smoking areas. At present, there are three such areas: at the turnarounds for the hillside buildings, and in one area near the pool villas. Signs will soon be put in place reminding owners that smoking is allowed only in those designated areas, and the Board is in the process of drafting a formal rule barring smoking except in the areas provided.
In our last report, we mentioned that a sidewalk was being built alongside the driveway leading to the lobby. It has now been constructed, and there is also a sidewalk from the pool villa area to the main road.
The General Manager is investigating the possibility of installing rods, hooks, or retractable clotheslines on the patios of the pool villas.
And once again, we ask owners to turn off the air conditioning (or increase the temperature) while they are not using their units during the heat of the day. This is the single most important thing that owners can do to keep maintenance fees down, as many of our costs are fixed, but our energy cost depends largely on how much power the owners draw.
Your owner-elected members of the Board of Directors,
Philip G. Schrag
phil.schrag@gmail.com
Robert Werbel
robert.werbel@yahoo.com
I still wouldn't do it - especially alone.
