Hyatt to get the go-ahead

By next week the principals in the proposed Hyatt hotel project are expected to have the planning permission they have been seeking to get construction on the 237-room resort going.

 

Word of this impending approval came from Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Freundel Stuart yesterday afternoon as he addressed a packed ballroom at the Hilton Hotel, where the Barbados Chamber of Commerce and Industry held its first business luncheon for 2017. According to PM Stuart, who has responsibility for Town Planning, he is expected to be in a position to give planning permission to the Hyatt project earmarked for Historic Bridgetown within “the next seven days”. And he explained, by that time, all the outstanding preconditions would be satisfied.

 

“This permission will be subject to all the necessary conditions that would protect the wider interests of the Barbadian community. I fully expect, therefore, that this project will commence sometime in the first half of 2017,” he stated.

 

His comments came as he said that the multimillion dollar Hyatt resort is but one of several tourism projects currently earmarked for Barbados, and which together constitute an investment of just over US $1 billion. He made the point while noting that all but one of those projects, the Wyndham Sam Lord’s Castle, will involve private capital.

 

Added to that large investment being made, PM Stuart said those projects will also put another 2300 rooms into the hotel room stock of this country and create in the region of 14,000 jobs directly and indirectly. As such, he said that in the “fullness of time” those projects should aid in the significant reduction of unemployment in this country.

 

Referring to some of other projects, he told the members of the business community in attendance that The Sands is expected to be completed by May, while Sandals Casuarina Phase 2 is expected to be completed in time for the country’s 51st anniversary of Independence, November 30 this year. In respect of the Sam Lord’s Castle project, he revealed that it is on track for construction to begin this March. Meanwhile, he indicated that Sandals Beaches is expected to start construction in the second half of this year.

 

Turning his attention to the much talked about Pierhead Marina and Sugar Point projects, he disclosed that in respect of the former, work should start either late this year or early 2018, and the latter project is still awaiting a decision.

 

“There are a number of other projects which will bring much needed foreign and domestic investment into Barbados. The Republic Bank’s new headquarters is one of them, as well as the Ridge Middle income Housing Development Project, where 750 houses will be constructed, and of course permission has already been granted,” he said.

 

He said all those, along with Government’s public sector capital works programme for projects in water and sanitation upgrade; nursery schools expansion through the Maria Holder Memorial Trust; the resurfacing and upgrade of the runway at the Grantley Adams International Airport; and road upgrade projects funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and CAF- the Development Bank of Latin America, should add a “definite and strong injection” of financing into the local economy. (JRT)