The Loops Foundation is rebuilding, from the ground up, the former Coconuts Restaurant and La Grange Beach Club on the West End beach, which was destroyed by the 2017 hurricanes.
“It’s going pretty fast, so I’m hoping they’ll open by the New Year,” Rudy Seikaly, the Loops founder, told the Source.
The Foundation was started in 2018 to commemorate Seikaly’s late son, Chris, a musician and artist known as “Loops,” who passed seven years ago. The foundation’s mission is “to empower communities through the arts, technology and education” following Chris’s values of love, creativity, integrity and perseverance.
“This is a legacy project for me in memory of my son, whom I lost at a young age. He went by the artist name Loops.”
The new building will be roughly the same size, with the kitchen and bar on the ground level and a rooftop deck to enjoy the sea view. The patio on the south side will be covered with tables and umbrellas.
Seikaly envisions the food as Mediterranean or a combination of Lebanese and Caribbean. He said he wants it to become the “top local spot where everybody wants to go hang out.”
The Loops Restaurant is on the beachfront across the street from the property Seikaly fenced recently to be used by Ruff Start Rescue for their monthly community dog care clinics.
The civil engineer also purchased more than 13 acres to construct a Loops Village.
The village will comprise several residences, a school, a robotics school, an amphitheater for music and lots of gardens. He said the village should employ 850 people or more to construct and can become a template for villages he would like to build elsewhere in the world.
“This is more a social justice project. While it will have for profit businesses so it is sustainable and provides employment, it will be mostly the social justice work that we want to do,” he said.
Seikaly, a civil engineer originally, came to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands after the 2017 hurricanes to advise about rebuilding schools and hospitals. He ended up with a contract to rebuild the Arthur Richards School, the first reconstruction on St. Croix. Only local contractors are being used, so the money stays here.
In the past, Seikaly helped rebuild Beirut after the war in 2006. The organization has supported art and music therapy for children, internet and technology in underserved areas and education and mental health programs for at-risk children.
Some of the worldwide programs supported by the Loops Foundation included a hospital in Sinai, a digital library in El Salvador, tuition assistance for teachers and students in Lebanon, and traumatized youth in Washington, D.C.
“So there’s a lot of stuff that we do all over the world that we want to try to bring here. It’s mostly community support,” Seikaly said.
St. Croix Source
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