A hilltop castle in St. Croix has sold for $9.5 million

The Moorish-style structure, set on about 110 acres, was built in the 1980s by the late Bulgaria-born Countess Nadia de Navarro-Farber. After her death in 2014, her husband, Yuri Farber, listed it for $15 million in 2016. The most recent asking price was $8.99 million, according to real-estate agent Peter Briggs of Christie’s International Real Estate the Saints, who shared the listing with Honnie Edwards of Calabash Real Estate.

The buyer is John Alexander, 60, an entrepreneur with several technology and real-estate finance companies. Mr. Alexander, who was born on St. Croix but grew up primarily in Idaho, said his family goes back four generations on the island. He said he moved back in 2021 and had been eyeing the castle property for years. “It’s been on my to-do list for 15 years,” he said. “It’s an amazing property.”

Mr. Alexander, who has a home elsewhere on St. Croix, said he plans to renovate the domed white castle and convert it into an event space and short-term rental. “I’m not a duke or a contessa,” he said. The castle property, which extends from the top of a mountain to the beach, has about 8.5 acres of commercially zoned land where he would like to put retail shops, a grocery store and a restaurant, he said.

Mr. Farber couldn’t immediately be reached. The countess lived primarily on Long Island but spent several months a year on St. Croix.

The castle is approximately 10,000 square feet. Inside, a domed ceiling is painted to look like a blue sky with clouds. “It’s an absolutely iconic property on St. Croix,” said Ms. Edwards.

The property also includes three cottages and the remains of a pier that was part of the now-closed Fairleigh Dickinson University West Indies Laboratory. Mr. Alexander said he plans to subdivide roughly 70 acres of vacant land on the property for residential development.

Mr. Alexander said he has a property management business that owns and operates a rental portfolio on St. Croix with more than 100 units. Over the past year, he said, Ms. Edwards helped him buy the castle and several other properties, including two hotels.

The Virgin Islands benefited from an influx of city-dwellers during Covid, Mr. Briggs said. “It’s been a boom for us,” he said, noting that his sales volume is up 300% from pre-pandemic levels. On St. John, he said, he recently sold a non-waterfront property for $9.7 million. “In the old days, a $2 million, $3 million, $4 million home was quite something,” he said. “And now we’ve broken the $10 million mark.”