The champagne flowed at a special Atlantis reception Monday night for government and business leaders celebrating Sol Kerzner’s decision to sink another $600 million into Paradise Island.
The spending will make Atlantis the largest single resort investment in the world, and Sol’s son, Butch, said the company is setting its sights on overtaking the Disney hospitality/tourist attraction empire.
The third-phase development will include expansion of the $800-a-night Ocean Club, one of the world’s highest-rated small hotels; more restaurant and retail facilities around the marina; a golf course on Athol Island; 50,000 square feet of extra convention space, and a long-awaited new hotel at Pirate’s Cove that will give Atlantis a total of 3,500 rooms. The company will be making more of its shares available locally and, Kerzner pointed out, “almost all of our eggs are now in The Bahamas.”
Good news. But it also puts tremendous pressure on the government and people of The Bahamas to do our part to make the investment pay off for everyone. Just as Atlantis has to ensure that it maintains a “robust product,” so we have to make infrastructure improvements, productivity improvements, attraction improvements, service improvements and more.
Same concessions
As the prime minister noted, the government would be extending the same concessions and privileges to Kerzner that it ciriticised the Ingraham administration for offering in the 1990s.
He also committed the government to “matching” Atlantis’ efforts through upgrades to roads, airports, utilities and training programmes. And he promised that no development would take place without the most stringent environmental evaluation.
“You have our commitment to bringing about the best destination in the entire world,” he told Kerzner. And he forecast the unveiling of major new resort developments in several Family Islands. The government is saying all the right things and, if we all follow through, returning to the kind of prosperity we enjoyed in the ’90s may not be quite as elusive as it has seemed in the past while.
Nevertheless, the question of how our “broke” treasury will finance all this in the interim is on everyone’s mind as the government introduces its first real budget in parliament today.
Editorial, The Nassau Guardian
