The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business

Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

GRAND Bahama’s Chamber of Commerce president yesterday voiced fears that the repeated failures to sell the Grand Lucayan resort will discourage other investors from coming to the island.

James Carey, speaking after the island “dodged a bullet” with the passage of Hurricane Nicole, urged Prime Minister Philip Davis KC to visit the island and talk with the business community on the Government’s plans for Grand Bahama’s economic development after the Grand Lucayan’s $100m purchase by Electra America Hospitality Group collapsed earlier this week.

“The deputy prime minister (Chester Cooper) said he is not going to disclose anything new until they have a deal secured, and that is unfortunate because it doesn’t say very much about us,” he said, adding that Grand Bahama’s business community needs “evidence” that something is happening to secure the future of the island’s anchor resort property.

“Electra America was supposed to be a done deal, and then they needed more time. That turned out to be nothing,” Mr Carey said. “I can see [a need for] some degree of confidentiality, but we have been going at this trying to get this hotel sold for over two years now and even longer than that, because the original owners (Hutchison Whampoa’s real estate arm) wanted to offload that prior to Hurricane Dorian.”

“It’s a little difficult now to accept all of these things, and it doesn’t bode well in terms of confidence in the utterances of the politicians.” Questioning whether previous utterances on the Grand Lucayan were just “political or about governance”, Mr Carey added: “We are just left hanging out there, and one of the things I can say is that the Prime Minister has been to Grand Bahama a couple of times.

“They had the big ground-breaking with the Carnival Cruise Port, and he’s been back to town a few times, but he’s not found an appropriate time yet to come and meet with the business community in Grand Bahama.”

Small businesses account for 80 percent of the jobs on Grand Bahama despite the big impact that industrial firms, such as Polymers International and Pharmachem, have as well and as the entities that make up the Grand Bahama Port Authority’s (GBPA) Port Group Ltd.

“We are the economy of Grand Bahama, and I find it a little disconcerting that the business community is being ignored, that we’re not given the time of day, we’re not given encouragement on a number of things that are happening that are impacting us,” Mr Carey lamented.

“The fact that Carnival is coming is good, the fact that the Weller Group has announced their development plans (a Six Senses resort) is real good. The University of Bahamas, they’ve started their process in terms of gutting the buildings. The renovation by the Milo Butler Group of the downtown facility in preparation for Solomon’s and these things together, they do start generating some economic activity.

“We need to see more, and we need to hear more, and not just what the Government can do but what the Port Authority can do and what the business community can do. The Prime Minister said they were going to work with everybody. Well, work with Grand Bahama,” the GB Chamber chief continued.

“We’re still wondering when the Prime Minister went to Dubai, and he came back and he said essentially business people in Dubai don’t want anything to do with Grand Bahama... Well, tell us why. Having uttered that message, how far did that get to Bahamian investors and global investors about Grand Bahama, and was that a negative about Grand Bahama?

“This failure of the sale of the Grand Lucayan is not a good thing. It raises questions. It’s a negative because that means nobody is ready to jump and invest, in this case with a huge investment, because the Grand Lucayan - apart from its purchase price - is going to require substantial investment to bring it up to a reasonable standard.”