Buccama Bay project to restart in January

Workers who hoped to be back on the job at the Buccament Bay Beach Resort project a few weeks after being laid off in May can give up hope. The project is now expected to be back in full swing in January, 2009.{{more}}

This is according to the new project manager, Mark Coggill of the International Construction &Engineering (ICE) group, who has entered into a partnership with Harlequin Hotel and Resorts, the developers of the $200 million project.

This is following the recent sacking of former contractors, Ridgeview Construction.

“We have about 60 workers on site now and we are going to be doing a little more work in September, but January is when construction will really begin,” Coggill told SEARCHLIGHT earlier this week.

This is a different tune to the one Chairman of Harlequin, Dave Ames was singing when he hastily called a press conference at the Grenadines House on May 24 to explain the laying off of workers.

“I believe that over the coming weeks we will begin to employ more and more people. I can’t say it is going to be a week (the lay off)…I know it is not going to be six months, I know it will be weeks, maybe two months,” Ames said back then.

“We have no shortage of money, not at all,” Ames also said then.

Workers who were employed at the resort told SEARCHLIGHT, when we visited them there that they were not too concerned if the lay off was going to last up to two months, but anything over that will be uncomfortable.

They can officially begin to feel uncomfortable, it seems.

Ames had said that the hold up was to accommodate some design changes that were being made by the Spanish hotel chain Oasis, which has entered into an agreement with Harlequin to operate the resort.

SEARCHLIGHT had contacted the Development Director of Oasis Hotels, Pedro Prats, at his Spain office, and he had given the assurance that the technical redesign should have been ready in about three weeks.

Now Coggill tells SEARCHLIGHT two months later that the redesign is not yet complete, but should be in September.

With all the changes taking place there, the question that must be asked now, it seems, is if the 2010 planned opening is still realistic.(KJ)