{"id":33114,"date":"2013-03-18T09:10:28","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T13:10:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/?p=33114"},"modified":"2013-03-18T09:10:28","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T13:10:28","slug":"baha-mar-biggest-thing-in-the-bahamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/2013\/03\/baha-mar-biggest-thing-in-the-bahamas","title":{"rendered":"Baha Mar: Biggest Thing In The Bahamas"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sky-filling fireworks were cascading down from the highest rooftop at Baha Mar, at $3.5 billion said to be the western hemisphere\u2019s largest current resort project, and the most ambitious ever built in the Bahamas\u2014Atlantis, visible across the water, notwithstanding. Massive pyrotechnic flower blooms and vivid multi-color spikes and streamers burst seemingly right on top of us, so close that occasional warm ashes hit our faces and embedded themselves in our hair.<\/p>\n

I turned to my friend The World Traveler, shoulder-to-shoulder with me in the jostling crowd and shouted, \u201cThis is so astounding!!\u201d<\/p>\n

She shouted back, \u201cThis is so Chinese!\u201d<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, here outside Nassau on the island of New Providence, that\u2019s exactly what it was. Though the project is headed by a local businessman, Sarkis Izmirlian, much of the construction work and the financing\u2014like the fireworks\u2014is straight out of the Mainland. Baha Mar\u2019s labyrinth of skeletal buildings swarms with blue hard-hatted workers from China\u2019s State Construction Engineering Corporation, and the construction site is festooned with banners in Mandarin and English, featuring such exhortations as \u201cWarmly welcome our gracious leaders to review and guide us,\u201d and \u201cNo violence to rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ceremony I attended in late February as a guest of the resort was a \u201ctopping off,\u201d celebrating the pouring of the concrete for the highest floor (the 25th) of Baha Mar\u2019s main hotel. That milestone for a project so massive it is expected to directly boost the GDP of Bahamas when it opens in December of 2014, received a suitably outsized commemoration. Several hundred invited guests, all wearing the blue hard hats, took construction elevators up to a top floor to stare out over the turquoise water, sip similarly colored cocktails and hear a speech or five. Bahamian Lenny Kravitz was on hand\u2014he has a contract to perform at the hotel when it opens, and the fireworks show was choreographed to \u201cAre You Gonna Go My Way?\u201d and \u201cFly Away.\u201d Izmirlian a surprisingly youngish man with a charmingly disarming manner, spoke about the resort\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n

The Chinese ambassador was proud that his country was associated with the project. Bahamian Prime Minister Perry Christie spoke discursively and at some length. The takeaway was that his country had a lot pinned on Baha Mar, which he called \u201cthe largest investment ever undertaken in the region.\u201d Among other things, the resort was a major motivation behind the government\u2019s $400 million expansion of Nassau\u2019s Lynden Pindling International airport, and is projected to provide 8,000 permanent jobs. You got the impression that Christie was nearly as anxious for December, 2014 as Izmirlian.<\/p>\n

Everything about the 1,000-acre Baha Mar is a big deal. A few numbers: There will be 2,200 hotel rooms spread between ventures from Rosewood, Grand Hyatt, Mondrian, Morgans and the centerpiece Baha Mar Casino & Hotel, the latter with a 100,000-square foot casino, the Caribbean\u2019s largest. There will be 30 restaurants and bars, a 2,000-square foot performing arts center and a 30,000-square foot ESPA spa, and\u2026Well, you get the idea: A Vegas-like self-contained recreational world, only with 3,000 feet of beach frontage.<\/p>\n

Among the happy consequences: The resort\u2019s commitment to displaying and promoting local artists may mark a major turning point in recognition for Bahamian painters and sculptors, who, from what little I saw, are definitely deserving of the scrutiny.<\/p>\n

This is a project whose success or failure will send massive ripples throughout the Bahamas and maybe the region beyond, and one whose cooperation between governments\u2014local, Bahamian and Chinese\u2014and private enterprise may provide a model for such mega-developments going forward. Expect a full-on Junkanoo in December, 2014\u2014and an outbreak of fireworks that will rock windows all the way to Miami.<\/p>\n

By Richard Nalley<\/span><\/em>
\nForbes.com<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The resort is a major motivation behind the government\u2019s $400 million expansion of Nassau\u2019s Lynden Pindling International airport, and is projected to provide 8,000 permanent jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[27,229],"class_list":["post-33114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinions","tag-baha-mar","tag-resorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}