Because the Summers End Group is organized as an LLC there is very little public information available about the financing of their activities.  However some extremely revealing financial information has recently been disclosed in court filings involving the Summers End Group.  This information appears to call into question the viability of the project and the motivations of the developers.

As background, in April 2018 the owners of Parcel 13 Rem (Coccoloba Plaza) filed a lawsuit in Virgin Island Superior Court to clear their title to their property and seek the court’s judgment that the 2013 sales agreement with Chaliese Summers was null and void due to nonperformance.  In July 2019 the Summers End Group responded by filing a countersuit in US District Court, alleging (without any apparent proof) that the defendants had caused major delays in Summers End receiving an Army Corps permit.

During the course of depositions in the federal lawsuit the Summers End Group presented evidence of their revenues and expenditures during the years 2017-2020.  This evidence was for the purpose of trying to prove financial damages.

Since most filings in federal district court are public documents, the brief containing the sworn testimony by Chaliese Summers and Rick Barksdale is now in the public record.  We have reviewed most of the filings in that lawsuit (referenced as case # 3:19-cv-00059-RAM-RM) and excerpted the financial data from those filings.  Although the data isn’t accompanied by  much explanatory text, and some of the numbers raise more questions than answers, there are some very glaring figures in the information presented to the court.

The excerpt of the financial report in the trial brief is shown below, reformatted for this page:

On October 21, 2021, I posted some of this information on Facebook, accompanied by the following statement:

Why do they do it? The Summers End Group … $$$
Over the past few years many people have asked me why the Summers End Group continues to push for their ill-conceived, infeasible mega marina in Coral Bay. Without any concrete evidence I’ve always been reluctant to speculate. Perhaps Ms. Chaliese Summers and Mr. Rick Barksdale don’t have any better way to spend their lives. Perhaps they feel like they are doing something good for the people of St John while doing good for themselves. Perhaps they simply don’t know how to end a charade. All of that would be pure speculation.

But very recently some concrete evidence for motivation has emerged in the public records of the United States District Court, District of St Thomas. In the civil docket for Case#: 3:19-cv-00059 there is a document entitled “Trial Brief by the Summers End Group, LLC” and on pages 25-26 of that document the expenditures of the Summers End Group are laid out in detail. Perhaps the most striking of these figures is the $1.2 million for “Employee Salaries” during the period from June 2017 through December 2020.

As far as I know there are just two employees of the Summers End Group: Chaliese Summers and Rick Barksdale. And according to these figures filed in US District Court these two have been paying themselves a combined $360,000 per year. In addition to “Employee Salaries” the reported numbers include a line item for “Operating Expenses”. Since the Summers End Group is not an operating business, presumably the only operating expenses refer to travel, accommodations, entertainment, and similar “business expenses.” And that is another roughly $300,000 per year.

And to be clear, “Operating Expenses” do NOT include other expected expenses such as Legal Fees and Professional Studies which are detailed elsewhere.

So the next time someone asks me why Rick and Chaliese are so persistent in their fight to destroy Coral Bay, I think I will have an answer: because it is VERY lucrative and they probably couldn’t find such a high paying job anywhere else in the Virgin Islands.  Of course the saddest part of this whole story is that while Summers and Barksdale have been lining their pockets with other people’s money, the local Coral Bay families who pledged their sole asset – their land – to this project, have received virtually nothing in return. I wish each and every one of the Senators of the 33rd Legislature who voted to approve the permits for the Summers End Group will reflect on this sad and tragic reality.”[David Silverman, 10/21/2021, posted on Facebook]