The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

The sale of Exuma’s “iconic” Club Peace & Plenty Resort is now awaiting government approval, a Cabinet Minister has confirmed, with the property’s overhaul a key component in Georgetown’s revival.

Khaalis Rolle, minister of state for investments, told Tribune Business that the Government had received an application for National Economic Council (NEC) and Investments Board approval from a purchaser whom he declined to identify.

“There is an application before us for the purchase,” he said. “That’s [Club Peace & Plenty] been on the market for quite some time, and obviously there is now a purchaser in place and a deal in place.”

Tribune Business sources suggested that the resort was being sold by its long-standing owners, the Benjamin family, to a group of American investors with existing ties to Exuma.

Mr Rolle did not comment on the purchaser’s identity, other than to say: “The buyer maybe a mixture of Americans and Bahamians, if I remember correctly.”

The 32-room Club Peace & Plenty sits at Georgetown’s heart, right next to the dock, making it critical to the area’s success and long-planned redevelopment.

“It’s an iconic property and world-renowned, and has an impeccable reputation,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business.

“There’s been an increase in activity all over Exuma. The heart of Exuma has been Georgetown. We did not factor that [the sale] into the equation immediately. We knew the property was on the market for quite a while, and we’re pleased some activity is taking place with it. Hopefully, work will start on it in short order.”

Club Peace & Plenty has formally been for sale for at least two years, having been placed on the market in February 2015.

The sales price was around $6 million with its realtor, Colin Lightbourn, president of Bahamas Waterfront Properties, then confirming that the figure was “close”.

Tribune Business reported at the time that the Benjamin family and its patriarch, Stan Benjamin, who acquired Club Peace & Plenty in the early 1970s, had been mulling whether to sell the resort for some time before placing it with a realtor.

The family had already been downsizing and selling its Exuma assets for some time, in what appears to be an estate planning move. The former Peace & Plenty Beach Inn is now Augusta Bay, while Venezuelan buyers purchased its bonefish lodge that is now known as Turquoise Cay.

When news of the Club Peace & Plenty Resort sale broke, Pedro Rolle, president of the Exuma Chamber of Commerce, called on Bahamians to purchase the property.

“Peace & Plenty is an institution in Georgetown, Exuma,” Mr Rolle told Tribune Business in 2015. “It seems as if it’s always been there, a piece of us. It will be missing if it’s no longer there.”

He expressed hope that any new owners would become a part of the Exuma and Georgetown community, “and live among us as the Benjamins have”.

The Club Peace & Plenty was opened by Lawrence Lewis, heir to the Henry Flagler railroad fortune, on January 14, 1958. The main building was originally a sponge warehouse and the bar a cookhouse dating back several hundred years to the Loyalist cotton plantation days.

Lewis sold the resort to the trio of Paul Swetland, Armand Angelone and Charlie Pflueger in 1969. That same year, Stan Benjamin, a Cleveland industrialist, first vacationed on Exuma and bought the Club Peace & Plenty several years later.

The resort lists its famous visitors as including Jimmy Buffet; Prince Phillip of England; actors Robert Mitchum, Sam Elliott, Gene Hackman, Johnny Depp; Hume Cronyn and wife Jessica Tandy; Ester Rolle; Al Roker; Jackie Kennedy Onassis; baseball greats Mickey Mantle, Dusty Baker and Davey Johnson; golfers Jack Nicklaus, Ray Floyd, Greg Norman and Tom Weiskof; footballer Joe Namath and coach Don Shula.