Prime Minister Perry Christie recently indicated that the government is facing difficulty in getting the Royal Oasis Resort in Freeport sold because many investors have no interest in hotels that are not located on beachfront properties.
“All investors who have been looking at the hotel have looked at the hotel in the context of whether or not they’re able to get beach property because in today’s Bahamas, in today’s resort businesses in the Caribbean it is the beach property that attracts people and so therefore it has become very difficult,” the prime minister explained during the most recent sitting of the House of Assembly last Wednesday.
His government has been trying to get the property sold ever since the owners, the Driftwood Group, closed it following Hurricane Frances in 2004.
The resort was badly damaged in the storm and its closure left more than 1,000 people unemployed in Grand Bahama.
The continued closure of the Royal Oasis is widely viewed as an indication of the economic woes Grand Bahama has been facing since the back-to-back storms in 2004.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Christie said the latest correspondence he had seen indicated that someone who was a part of one group of investors had indicated his preparedness to put a deposit down to certify that money was in place.
Mr. Christie said the investor was waiting on a response from Lehman Brothers, the financier for Driftwood, which is seeking to recover its investment.
“There are any number of visitations going on where groups are looking at the property with a view to making a purchase, but so far it eludes us,” Mr. Christie admitted.
He also explained why the government had not completed severance payments to the displaced workers as it had promised.
“We had hoped that as a result of having a very strong indication that the property would be sold-the government would have been able to roll into the sale of the property the proceeds of insurances that we await for settlement. We had been told that this was going to happen some weeks ago. Unfortunately, we have not found out yesterday or today the current position. We are told that it is a day to day position.”
He also said that an injunction was placed on the insurance settlement due to court proceedings in the United States.
“The government had been assured of a specific date when the insurance settlement would have been made to Lehman Brothers and others,” the prime minister continued. “We had hoped that in that mix we would have had some resolution of the settlement and rights of those persons who were working.”
He assured that the government will keep the country informed of what is taking place.
Mr. Christie said the government remains hopeful that the Royal Oasis Resort will be sold and reopened in the not too distant future.
He said government agencies were still assisting the displaced workers to ensure that there was no “acute suffering”.
Source: The Bahama Journal
