The Member of Parliament for North Eleuthera Alvin Smith has blasted the government’s anchor project policy, identifying at least one such project that he said shows an “embarrassing-lack of substance.”
Mr. Smith seemed exasperated with the reported lack of progress on the new French Leave Resort in Governorﾒs Harbour, for which the heads of agreement was signed two years ago.
An agreement was signed in May for a Park Hyatt hotel to be part of the new French Leave, and the developer, Eddie Lauth, told the Journal in June that he hoped construction would begin in “the next few months.”
“Nothing has started yet, other than demolishing of buildings ﾖ nothing else has happened there, nothing else,” Mr. Smith charged. “Not one block has been laid, but you still hear government ministers parading around the Commonwealth of The Bahamas talking about anchor projects in Eleuthera.
“The heads of agreement was signed more than two years now [but] nothing has been done.”
In his opinion, Mr. Lauthﾒs company EIC Resorts did not have the finances to complete the project.
“And I believe that they are going to use the land that they have bought ﾖ and they bought the land rather cheaply ﾖ so they are going to use that land, Bahamian land, as equity to raise funds to go ahead with the project,” Mr. Smith said.
Mr. Smith said he had met Mr. Lauth many times and thought he “means well” ﾖ “but I donﾒt think the people he has have the funding to go ahead with the project.”
The new French Leave is being built on the grounds of the original French Leave Resort which burned down in 1972 and was replaced by an unsuccessful Club Med, which closed in 1999.
Mr. Lauth and his group acquired the place intending to invest $40 million and revitalize it. The anticipated investment has reportedly more than doubled to more than $100 million.
Along with the Park Hyatt hotel, the French Leave Resort will also encompass Savannah Hill, which EIC describes as “an upscale residential community.”
According to Mr. Lauth, the new resort marina is part of a planned 356-acre development along Eleutheraﾒs famed Pink Sand Beach, along with restaurants, a full-service spa, up to ten estate lots, villas and cottages.
The marina will take a year to construct, once it gets underway. The length of construction time is due, Mr. Lauth said, to the need to construct a multimillion-dollar breakwater at Governorﾒs Harbour. A breakwater is a protective structure of stone or concrete that extends from shore into the water to prevent a beach from washing away.
Construction of the resort itself will take between 18 to 24 months.
“Weﾒre hoping that the development will start sometime very soon this year,” Mr. Lauth told the Journal in June. “[We hope to] start the marina here in the next few months.”
The original French Leave was a real anchor project, according to Mr. Smith, as was the Harrisville Company in Hatchet Bay which collapsed in the 1970s, and Cotton Bay as it was decades ago in Rock Sound.
“I look at anchor projects as projects that have a serious impact on employment, and that make a serious dent on unemployment. So projects that are going to hire a large number of persons, I categorize those as anchor projects,” Mr. Smith said.
“I havenﾒt seen any yet on Eleuthera which I would categorize by my classification as an anchor project.”
In his view, anchor projects are the ones that stabilize the economy, that hire large numbers of people and create spin-off business opportunities.
By: Quincy Parker, The Bahama Journal
