On Friday, what once seemed a distant dream in the Caribbean became real on a Bahamas beach with the long-awaited opening of the Baha Mar super-resort.
More than 10 years in the making, the 1,000-acre development outside the capital of Nassau debuted Friday with the first of its three planned hotels, an 1,800-room Grand Hyatt, along with a 100,000-square-foot casino, the largest in the Caribbean, an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course, several swimming pools, a portion of its Espa-branded luxury spa and a handful of the more than 70 restaurants and high-end retailers that will be introduced over the next year.
Priced at US$4.2 billion at full build-out, Baha Mar will welcome a 300-room SLS hotel later this year, with starting rates at upwards of $500 a night, and a 200-room Rosewood, the most upscale of the three, with prices starting $700, slated to open in spring 2018.
“It doesn’t matter that not everything is up and running,” said Dan Marmontello, product manager for CheapCaribbean.com, a site that sells affordable Caribbean and Mexico trips. “But we need to make sure that there are enough amenities available so that our clients can go and have a good time there.”
Ironically, what is shaping up as one of the largest gaming resorts in North America, was in receivership just 18 months ago and almost didn’t open at all.
Nassau-based BMD Holdings, led by developer Sarkis Izmirlian, first announced plans for the resort in late 2005. It was almost six more years before shovels hit the ground, funded through a $2.45 billion loan from the Export-Import Bank of China, along with an $850 million investment from Baha Mar and a $150 million investment from the contractor, China Construction America.
A scheduled May 2015 never happened and as delays and cost-overruns mounted, Izmirlian and his Chinese backers fell out with one another. The project, 90 percent complete at that point, went into bankruptcy proceedings that fall. Some 2,000 employees, most of them Bahamians, were out of jobs, and the government was facing a political and public relations nightmare.
The government rebuffed attempts by Izmirlian to regain control of the project and it exited bankruptcy under the auspices of the Bahamas courts in 2016 in the control of Export-Import Bank of China. EXIM invested $700 million to finish the building and found a buyer last fall in deep-pocketed Hong Kong-based conglomerate Chow Tai Fook Enterprises.
The company’s plans for a unique luxury experience encompass a number of over-the-top touches.
Golfers, for example, can choose to rent one of more than 100 sets of top-of-the line clubs, including handmade Itobori clubs from Japan, which retail for $8,000.
Restaurants include an English pub with 24 beers on tap; the opulent, Shuang Ba, where top chefs from China will visit and cook; a beachside conch shack; and Katsuya, an upscale sushi chain that started in the Los Angeles area.
A collection of fountains and lakes will feature a nightly show where water, illuminated with multicolored lasers, shoots 110 feet into the air, and a video with Bahamian dancers performing to high-energy tribal music is projected against cascading walls of water.
Chow Tai Fook expects an emphasis on Bahamian culture and the local environment will be another differentiating factor.
“Yes, we’re about the sun and the sand, but we want to give people a richer experience than you get on the typical beach vacation,” a spokesman for the company said.
Children’s activities will include visits to a Baha Mar aviary to learn about indigenous hummingbirds and butterflies and take classes in Bahamian crafts such as basket weaving.
Indigenous art is another focus. The property will display 8,500 pieces?paintings, sculptures, ceramics and photographs?by both established and emerging contemporary artists from the islands. There will also be a studio where artists-in-residence will work and teach classes.
Baha Mar will employ 5,500 people once all the hotels are open and will contribute around 12 percent to the Bahamas’ gross domestic product, according to estimates from a 2013 report by Oxford Economics.
Reneta McCarthy, a senior lecturer at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, said, “There’s been a lot of buzz about this project and drama surrounding it for years. It’s an ambitious venture, and all eyes will be on it to see how it fares.”
