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<span style="color: #660000">UK investors plan 6,000-room resort for Negril</span>
by Camilo Thame Business Observer writer
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Investors from the United Kingdom plan to build a resort that would create more than 6,000 new rooms just outside the western resort town of Negril.
The project, currently in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) stage, would involve the development of a marina, several hotels, villas and apartments, a shopping mall, medical centre, security station, retail outlets, offices, restaurants, along with parklands and an amphitheatre for public events spread across 361 acres of land at an initial estimated cost of US$1 billion (J$67.5 billion) spent over five years.
SPK Engineering's Garfield Haughton, who is team leader for the EIA, a critical process required by the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) to determine how major projects move forward, says the investors, who operate in Jamaica under the name Negril Peninsula Resort Ltd, do not wish to comment on the project until it gets approval. He was optimistic that the project would, however, "start as soon as it gets regulatory approval".
According to the EIA report submitted to NEPA last month, the proposed development is an eco-tourism resort that will provide "6,228 habitable rooms from the three planned hotel complexes on the development and 1,202 various types of residential buildings". A total of 3,903 rooms are expected to be used for "direct tourism" with the remainder used for non-direct tourism.
The project will be done in four phases, with the first phase bringing 2,259 habitable rooms, 14 commercial; the medical/police centre; the marina, which will accommodate 170 keeled yachts; the creation of five new beaches; a market square; and the amphitheatre.
Haughton told the Business Observer in an interview last weekend that the project would be undertaken in the context of planned, sustained development that was ecologically friendly.
"Practices used in construction and operation will be ecologically friendly," said Haughton. "Some of the buildings fit into the environment without being too obtrusive."
The project plan calls for the construction of resort residences using "indigenous and natural materials, to give the impression of simplicity and organic assimilation within the setting, and in doing so, promoting a sense of well-being and holistic, ecological balance".
The total project cost is currently estimated at around US$1 billion, but, said Haughton, the report estimates "a generation of J$250 million over the projected five-year construction period, which will go directly into the economy and the pockets of the workers of the Negril community".
The project plans to generate in excess of 1,500 jobs in the initial construction phase and over 3,000 permanent jobs at the full start-up of operations of all commercial, tourism and municipal activities.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines...FOR_NEGRIL_.asp
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