Black Sands Resort ready for guests by June

The first phase of the 400-room resort at Peter’s Hope will be completed and ready to receive guests by June this year.

That assurance was given by tourism minister, Cecil McKie, who was responding to a question in Parliament on January 22, regarding the status of the project and reasons why work has been delayed.
The Black Sands Resort is being undertaken by Pace Development, a Canadian company, and the groundbreaking for the project was held three years ago on January 19, 2017.

But none of the three phases of the project has been completed so far.

“We have been advised that the Physical Planning Department indicated that while they consider the pace of construction to be slow, the infrastructure of the villas meet international standards,” McKie said in Parliament.

He noted that phase one that is currently being carried out includes the construction of 10 villas, each comprising five rooms.

And phase two, the construction of 150 rooms in the hotel block, is expected to be completed within the next 14 months; while phase three — the remaining 200 rooms — is projected to be completed by the end of 2021.

“We have also been advised that work on the project took a break for the christmas season and that work will recommence on the villas by the end of this month…and will be fully completed utilising 100 workers, all of whom are local,” the tourism minister said.

“…the concrete structures of the villas, we have been advised are complete, save for the finishing and they should be fully completed and ready for operation by June 2020”.

McKie said that like with all projects, it is expected that “there will be overruns but those are the dates we have been given and we have been assured that the second phase of the hotel block…would move at a quicker pace than the construction of the villas, which were 10 separate buildings”.