The $8 million, 75-room Mayfair Hotel on West Bay Street is looking at a spring 2005 opening amid concerns that the electronic billboard helping to advertise the property and other products is out of place in historic downtown Nassau.
In an interview with The Tribune, Brian Aranha, director of Wavecrest, the company constructing the hotel said that after seeing similar signs in Jamaica and New York’s Time Square, the decision was made to use an electronic billboard to help advertsie the property.
He added that the sign was the first of its kind in the Bahamas and because of that the technological platform it uses is not adequately addressed in existing physical planning legislation.
Mr. Aranha said that following a lengthy review by the department of Physical Planning, the hotel finally received the appropriate government approvals for using the electronic signage.
Frank Comito, executive director of the Nassau Tourism and Development Board, said several persons had expressed concern about the need, particularly in historic areas, to have guidelines about what type of signage is acceptable and what is not.
Source: Yolanda Deleveaux, The Tribune
