Michael HelmMichael Helm lives in a house along Blackburn Highway, between Fish Bay and Kingstown Church, one of several places he has lived since arriving in Tortola with his family in 1965. The house has a spectacular view of the Sir Francis Drake Channel and some of the other Virgin Islands. Michael hails from West London (U.K.), having been born in 1936 in Kensington, but later living in Chelsea and the City of Westminster. He moved around in his childhood, both for family reasons and because of the Second World War (he was evacuated to the Bedford area for a while). He completed his high school education at Hurstpierpoint College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurstpierpoint_College), a public boarding school founded in 1849, in the Domesday Book settlement of Hurstpierpoint, which is located in West Sussex, not far from Brighton on the A23 road.
After leaving school Michael entered the “Regent Street Polytechnic” in 1954 to study architecture. This institution, more formally called the Royal Polytechnic Institution was a flagship UK polytechnic in the post-war years. In 1992, along with some other colleges that it had amalgamated with over the years, it was rechristened the University of Westminster, with the Queen continuing as its patron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Westminster). Michael was given a scholarship from the Lord Kitchener National Memorial Fund in order to partially fund his studies in architecture at the polytechnic institution. (http://www.kitchenerscholars.org/pages/fund.htm). To supplement his scholarship he took a job in one of the many coffee bars in King’s Road, Chelsea. This was to prove a pivotal event in his life as there he met Sarah who was later to marry Sam Penrose. Together Sam and Sarah bought and built the 52-acre Long Bay Beach Resort (with the help of First Minister Lavity Stoutt) on Tortola – with Michael Helm designing some of its first buildings. This took place in the early 1960s when Michael was still living in the U.K. and working in Richmond, Greater London.
The British Virgin Islands were seen to be an attractive investment area at this time because the official currency was by then the US dollar, but the BVI were part of the Sterling Currency Zone under the Bretton Woods system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system). To cut a long story short, this made it much more economic to change pounds sterling into U.S. dollars in the BVI than elsewhere, and thus investments from the U.K. were encouraged. One of these proved to be the aforementioned Long Bay Beach Resort. In 1964 Michael Helm came to visit the BVI to visit his friends (who by then included Lavity Stoutt, who encouraged him to stay). He found many opportunities for work that suited him better than his current endeavour in Richmond and so in September 1965 he arrived in Tortola to begin what would become a very successful lifetime career move. He was part of a movement that saw the white population increase from “32 to 65” over a three month time period. His first car licence plate was #69, and his first company was #50! Since arriving in Tortola Michael has always worked for himself, as he says he “is unemployable” by others.
The Virgin Islands were showing signs of “taking off” economically in the mid-1960s, with numerous activities, such as the building of the highway from the West End to Roadtown taking place and Little Dix Bay resort being opened in 1964. Later there were major yacht chartering endeavours such as CSY (Caribbean Sailing Yachts) and The Moorings that helped generate a breakthrough in the tourist industry in the late 1960s early 1970s. This then led to the foundation of many other successful businesses.
Michael Helm quickly became part of this building process, working for instance on the original Fort Burt hotel, and the Waterfront Houses below it. He also worked with Norman Fowler and later Ken Bates on the Wickhams Cay developments (see the profile of Norman Fowler on this website for further details). Norman Fowler’s original idea included some houses and a ‘pitch and putt’ golf course. Clearly this vision was dramatically changed under the ownership of Ken Bates and then the government of the Virgin Islands! Michael feels he was instrumental in preventing Bates from paving over Palm Grove park (now the Noel Lloyd/Positive Action Committee Park). Because of this early involvement Michael was invited by Lavity Stoutt to be the only “civilian” (non-civil service person), and thus often the only dissenting voice, on the Planning Subcommittee of the Wickhams Cay Interim Advisory Board. The Board was set up to advise the newly formed Wickhams Cay Authority in 1975. He served on this sub-committee for sixteen years. He has continued his successful architecture practice with work in both the Virgin Islands (such as the Katiche Point Greathouse on Virgin Gorda) and the USVI (e.g. Mahogany Run and Blackbeard’s in St. Thomas).
Clearly “the whole place” has changed since 1965 as Michael has pointed out, with major infrastructure changes, an explosion of new buildings, the growth of tourism and finance, significant immigration of “non-Belongers” (Michael is now a Belonger), and a complete integration into the world economy. For instance Cable and Wireless came in and “suddenly everyone had a phone”. Many of these changes have been for the better, but Michael sees some as steps backward –such as the growth of cruise ship numbers, which strain the country’s infrastructure while contributing comparatively little to the economy.
Michael believes that it would be almost impossible for somebody like him to arrive in the Virgin Islands now. You have to have money to be welcomed here now. Opportunities are probably fewer, regulations have increased, and many Belongers attitudes towards expats have hardened making it more difficult to get things done in the way things were in the 1960s and 1970s. However, he would do little differently himself if he were starting over. He does believe that many good things have happened in the BVI, especially for a place this size, and there are many well-qualified people both in government (the civil service) and elsewhere. He cites the response to (e.g.) Hurricane Hugo (September 1989) and Hurricane Marilyn (September 1995) in the Virgin Islands compared to that in the USVI as an example of the community spirit and entrepreneurship that he recognised in his early days in the BVI. He thinks that there is a different spirit here now, however, that is not as positive as it was in the past. This is in part a result of changes instituted by the Thatcher government in Britain when it created the Overseas Territories in the early 1970s. He sees the Virgin Islands as less of a West Indian (UK-oriented) country now and more of a Caribbean (US-oriented) nation.
Apart from the more obvious contributions Michael has made to architecture, building design, and planning in the Virgin Islands he feels he has contributed to the training of younger people for careers in the country, and believes that he has had a "5%" positive influence on the way the Virgin islands has developed. But at the same time he thinks that development could have been better and that “we didn’t learn (enough) from St. Thomas – although the general standard of buildings is better here than in the USVI. The present recession is creating challenges but Michael believes that the BVI will “be fine” when the dust has settled. He has no plans to leave his adopted country – “Where else would I go?”
Draft of February 8th of interview of February 7th, 2012