Development

Planning on knocking down and opening. You have to wonder at the chutzpa. Someone informs me that they contacted the Shoal Bay Resort and Spa development. They claim that they are planning on knocking down Madeariman and Uncle Ernie’s in March 2009 to start construction of the villas! IMI staff swarming all over the place. They deny they are in anyway connected to Viceroy. Just coincidence. God knows, no one else does, how Viceroy connections come to be so pervasive. And persuasive. IMI have to have some story about when construction is starting. After all, they can’t just tell the speculators, “I don’t know when we will start. Just give me your money and don’t worry about it.” They only have two choices: tell some lies, or quit marketing the project indefinitely. And, then what do they tell the suckers who gave them their deposits? That they spent their money on something else? I don’t think so.

So, why is the whole project for sale? [It has since been pointed out to me that I mis-read the linked advertisement which relates to one unit only, not the entire project.]

Someone else emails me that I am to stop worrying. Rendezvous Bay Hotel is ‘getting its financing arranged in a few months’ time’. Let me see now. I am an investor and looking for someplace to put my money. Anguilla has six developments. Five of them are closed down. Yep, seems like just the place I would want to put my money. Rendezvous still has a sales staff, so it seems like a good story to tell people who stop by. But, there is no sales office, and the hotel is falling down. Maybe they’ll move in with Flag at Savannah Bay.

Cap Juluca is burning through money. Wish they’d give me some. I walk Maundays Bay beach once a week, early in the morning. I notice the barge load of sand due three weeks ago finally arrived last Sunday from Barbados. But, it’s ‘bad sand’, a darker colour than the ‘good sand’ on the beach. So, they’re digging huge pits on the beach. Like twenty feet deep full of water. They are piling up the ‘good sand’ in big mountains of sand. They’re filling the holes with ‘bad sand’ and then topping them off with ‘good sand’. You’ve got to see it to believe it. More beach buggies on one beach than I've ever seen before. Except that they are fifteen feet high, and twenty feet long. We’ll have to see what happens to these mountains of sand in the coming weeks. Really pouring some bucks into the old place. They open on Monday.

What a start to the tourist season!