Mothballed Baha Mar Project to Resume in September

Construction on the Bahamas' long-delayed Baha Mar resort will resume next month after the country's government reached an agreement with the project's primary lender to finish the site and sell it to a "world-class hotel and casino operator," Bahamas prime minister Perry Christie said in a statement Monday.

Under the agreement that was approved by the Bahamas Supreme Court, the lender, Export-Import Bank of China, will finish the resort by next spring and will pay a "significant part, and possibly all" of the outstanding debt accrued by the $3.5 billion project, including workers' unpaid salaries, severance pay and accrued vacation pay.

Christie, who called Monday "a great day for Bahamians" didn't say who the hotel operator will be or how much Export-Import Bank of China will have to spend to finish the site.

The 1,000-acre beachfront project, which will include four hotels totaling about 2,200 rooms as well as a casino, a 200,000-square-foot convention center and a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, started construction on Nassau's Cable Beach in February 2011 with plans to open the resort in late 2014.

The project ground to a halt amid acrimony between developer Sarkis Izmirlian and primary contractor CCA Bahamas, a division of China State Construction Engineering Corp. Izmirlian unsuccessfully tried to put the project into U.S. bankruptcy last June, then laid off 2,000 employees last September.

The unfinished project was put up for sale this past spring with both Kerzner International, whose properties include the Bahamas' Atlantis Paradise Island, and Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International previously rumored to be potential buyers of the project.

"It is a great project, however, we are not involved," said MGM Resorts International spokesman Clark Dumont.

Representatives from Kerzner International did not respond to a request for comment from Travel Weekly on Tuesday.

Izmirlian, who has been critical of both the Bahamas government and Export-Import Bank of China since being removed from the project, continued to question the motives of those parties.

"We call on the Government of the Bahamas and [Export-Import Bank of China] to reveal the specifics of any completed transaction and provide in detail how unsecured creditors would benefit from this purported transaction," Izmirlian's BMD Holdings said in a statement Wednesday. "Of particular interest is both the scheme that has been concocted between CCA, and [Export-Import Bank of China] and the source of such payments, when unsecured creditors who completed the work they were contracted to complete have yet to be paid or guaranteed payment."

Source: Travel Weekly