Quito Rymer's farewell concert
Quito Rymer performs during his farewell concert on Saturday at his beach bar and restaurant in Cane Garden Bay. (Photo: SHAUN CONNOLLY)

To boost the tourism industry, the Virgin Islands should clean its roadways, shore up its infrastructure, and revisit plans to build a casino, among other steps, according to singer and businessman Quito Rymer.

Speaking as he prepared for his farewell concert on July 13, the local music legend said he hopes to complete the sale of his Cane Garden Bay hotel and restaurant to One Mart owner Mark Vanterpool by the middle of next month.

After that, he will no longer have a business presence in the territory, he said, adding that he has property in Wisconsin and is considering retiring to Hawaii in a few years.

“Now it feels like it’s time to move on,” he said. “I think I need to step away. This August it will be 43 years since I have been in business. The restaurant came before the music started. I was setting myself up a venue that I couldn’t be fired from.”

Advice

Though he is set to retire abroad, Mr. Rymer had plenty of advice to offer the VI.

“The territory is hurting,” he said. “It looks like a third world country now, and we are not. Every time I fly back home and I get off [the plane], it’s like a sucker punch. It hurts to see it.”

He recommended starting with straightforward steps.

“You come out of the airport and the stuff — it needs to clean up,” he said. “Even if you can’t get all the buildings done: clean up, fix the roads. It’s just terrible.”

Mr. Rymer also called for a territory-wide strategy to tackle such issues.

“I don’t think enough is being done,” he said. “I was hoping that this new government would have had a plan for roadworks across the whole territory.”

Though he said successive governments have not lived up to expectations over the years, he still has high hopes for the current administration.

“They just got in, so I am willing to give them a little more time,” he said. “They are young and energetic people. They are smart people. So I don’t see the reason they can’t get it together.”

Recent progress

He added that some progress has been made in recent years.

“The government did a good job in getting American Airlines back, which helps,” he said. “But I think we need a lot more attention. I want to see them just start doing more.”

The performer added that the VI has a lot to offer visitors.

“The territory itself, it still draws people in because of the sailing, the beaches,” he said. “That’s not going to change. It would be nice to see more done.”

Storm struggles

Mr. Rymer said he has been through a lot in recent years with his restaurant and his 21-room hotel, which opened in 2019 after delays caused by Hurricane Irma.

“The restaurant, the Gazebo, got knocked down several times,” he said. “Sometimes the swell was getting really high and sometimes knocked it down. We just rebuilt it and kept going. It was always a battle between the ocean and myself.”

When Irma struck, the hotel was under construction and he was traveling in Africa.

“The hotel was not too bad,” he said. “We didn’t have the doors and windows in yet. It just kind of blew through it. But the restaurant, it really got hit. It took out the whole floor, whole kitchen. Everything was gone.”

Since he was away from the territory, he was only able to see the destruction in photos at first.

“I saw pictures, but nobody showed me the pictures of the inside,” he said. “They just showed me the pictures of the outside, and it looked good. And then when I got back here everything was gone inside. It was very shocking.”