After years of abandonment at the failed Four Seasons Resort project at Walmer Lodge, St Michael, the site of the former Paradise Beach Hotel is set for a major facelift.
The announcement was made by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who revealed that Government had already begun negotiations with a US-based entity to construct a luxury hotel on that site within the next three years.
Construction on the US$600 million Four Seasons project, which was to see a 110-room hotel and 35 private villas being built, ground to a halt in 2009 after the original developers ran out of money.
The project began running into difficulties in late 2008 when more than half of the villas, priced between $11 million to $18 million, remained unsold and buyers who had made deposits of between ten per cent and 40 per cent stopped making additional payments.
Among the prominent buyers which the villas attracted were composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, Formula One team owner Eddie Jordan and Simon Cowell, whose villa was to span two plots and cost $32 million.
Speaking during the Barbados Labour Party’s 81st Annual General Conference at Queen’s Park over the weekend, the Prime Minister said Attorney General Dale Marshall and Government’s financial advisor Avinash Persuad, had already made contact with the potential developers.
“Only yesterday [Friday] the Attorney General and Professor Persaud concluded with the directors of Clearwater, which is a Government company, to settle a letter of intent for the Morse family, a large set of investors out of the US for them to be able to take over the property at Paradise and build a five or six-star luxury hotel over the course of the next two to three years.
“The last government left it to rot and rust and taxpayers put more than $120 million into it, but your Government has now agreed to have that kept whole. The Government, on conclusion and transfer of the property will receive $40 million in cash and the other $84.5 million will be kept in preference shares so that we will be paid money before the owners get a single cent,” Mottley declared.
The Prime Minister also revealed that work on the stalled Sam Lord’s Castle Wyndham Grand Resort in St Philip would soon be resuming.
In Parliament back in March, Mottley said while she expected construction of that 400-room property to be completed in 2020, the $400 million project was “a little behind time”.
However, she said while an agreement had been reached with the developers of the project, Government was planning on dividing the 57-acre St Philip property to allow for more than one hotel to be built on that site.
