Stanley Selengut Biography

Stanley Selengut, 78, is a civil engineer specializing in sustainable resort development. His varied career began in the 1950's when he created a large-volume importing company specializing in South American native crafts. The company (Piñata Party) grew to service hundreds of stores and employed over 2,000 Andean Indians. Complete villages existed on revenues from their woolen, leather and fur accessories.

Selengut's solutions to the developmental problems of these villages led him to serve as a consultant to the Kennedy Administration. He completed 14 contracts in Latin America working for the State Department and then worked as staff consultant in Industrial Development for the Office of Economic Opportunity. Subsequently, he opened a design-consulting firm.

A consulting assignment on low-income housing for the Rockefeller Brothers led Selengut to the Virgin Islands National Park on St. John. Here he was faced with the challenge of developing an economically viable resort facility compatible with National Park mandates. The 114 unit Maho Bay Campground is not only environmentally responsible but is also one of the most profitable businesses on St. John. On land adjacent to Maho Bay Campgrounds he developed the Harmony Studios: luxury units built from recycled building materials and energized by photovoltaic cells. On the opposite side of St. John Island, Selengut is currently developing Estate Concordia, a 51 acre resort community exploring utility self-sufficient cottages, super insulated villas and other green building processes. The resort addresses needs of the physically challenged.

Selengut's background in craft development along with his interest in sustainable design has led to creating a craft center, which focuses on the local re-manufacture of waste from the resorts into saleable art and crafts. The hot shop blows glass from melted bottles. The fabric studio tie dyes, batiks, silk screens or paints on worn linens, blankets, towels, etc. and sows or weaves them into clothes or objects. The foundry cast jewelry and sculptures from waste aluminum cans and the art studio makes art paper from office waste mixed with lint from the laundry.

We experiment in energy conservation innovations at the craft center such as firing the kiln of the ceramic studio with waste pallet wood and have explored secondary uses of the heat from the glass furnace such as heating water and subsidizing heat at the aluminum melting furnace.

Our visiting artist program has attracted some of our countries leading craftsman. We have an on-site art gallery, offer classes to our guest, wholesale to local shops and art galleries and offer some items by mail order in our web site. Guest enjoy watching the artist perform and this stimulates sales.

The benefits of enhanced guest experience, increased occupancy through craft programs; local outreach and profitability have led us to plan craft centers at other resorts.

Selengut has also put environmental education as one of his top priorities. He has spoken before hundreds of schools and conferences worldwide and uses his properties for workshops for Virgin Island school children and educational institutions nationwide.

He has served as a Founding Board Member of the International Ecotourism Society and on the National Council of The National Parks and Conservation Association. In August of 1999 the then Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt, appointed Selengut to the National Park System Advisory Board where he served as Chairman of the Committee on Sustainability and Environmental Leadership.