The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

A top Freeport attorney today urges the government to ensure that the Grand Bahama Port Authority’s (GBPA) owners use their Carnival port proceeds to finance airport restoration.

Terence Gape, senior partner at Dupuch & Turnquest, in a letter (published here) calls on the Minnis administration to ensure the Grand Bahama Airport Company’s owners make financing available for its swift rebuilding given its importance to the Freeport economy’s survival.

He suggests that the government require that the proceeds received by the GBPA’s two shareholder families, the Haywards and St Georges, from selling land they own at Sharp Rock to Carnival for its new cruise port be placed “in escrow” to guarantee there are funds available to rebuild the airport’s Dorian devastated terminals.

Arguing that it was futile to wait on the proceeds from any insurance claim, Mr Gape wrote: “I would respectfully suggest that the Government should immediately commence talks with the Port Authority (the Families) and obtain from them the following:

“One, that the Families and Hutchison both agree that the airport insurance proceeds be fully utilised in the rebuilding of the terminal on an urgent basis. Two, that the families immediately produce their own economic and action plan for the revitalisation and rehabilitation of the City of Freeport to include the airport...

“Three, specifically, the families agree to sequester or escrow or dedicate the Sharp Rock funds necessary to finance the shortfall of cash to Insurance proceeds needed to design and build a new international (and local) terminal at the very earliest opportunity.”

Hutchison Whampoa and the GBPA each have 50 percent equity ownership stakes in the Grand Bahama Airport Company (GBAC), with the former having management control, Mr Gape said the facility represented an “essential service” to the island’s people - especially given its importance to the multi-million dollar Carnival and Royal Caribbean/ITM Group investments.

“The airport terminal is an absolute priority,” Mr Gape argued. “I have been gratified by the growing realisation that the Grand Bahama International Airport is an essential instrument, and is central to the rehabilitation and revitalisation of the Grand Bahama economy.

“Without this, our industrial plant will wither and die and our efforts to revive the tourism sector will fail. It has even been said that without an international airport Grand Bahama will become another Andros.

“If Hutchison and the families readily agree to earmark funds for the airport terminal and commence reconstruction then my fears will have proven groundless and I apologise.”

Mr Gape’s words echo those of Magnus Alnebeck, Pelican Bay’s general manager, who told Tribune Business in a recent interview that “Freeport’s business model won’t work” unless its airport is rapidly restored to a standard where it can receive US and international flights.

With the US pre-clearance facility unlikely to return until Grand Bahama International Airport was restored to an acceptable condition, the Pelican Bay chief said Freeport and the wider island faced the threat of “being converted to an out island very quickly”.

He argued that it “would not even become an Exuma or Eleuthera”, as both those islands receive international flights, but rather “an Andros” located just 80 miles from South Florida unless international airlift came back “as quickly as possible”.

“To be able to get US airlift back in, and Bahamasair back up and running, is vital - not only for tourism but for the Freeport business model with all the industrials,” Mr Alnebeck told Tribune Business. “Without the airport the Freeport model doesn’t really work.

“Without the airport opening up Freeport gets converted to an Out Island very quickly, but an Out Island without airlift from the US. We don’t even become an Exuma or Eleuthera because they have airlift from the US. We become an Andros.”