Kerzner, Mohegan Sun named
Bahamas Prime Minister Perry Christie, responding to widespread skepticism over the past few weeks, insisted last week in a newspaper interview that his government is close to brokering an agreement to bring a new owner into the stalled Baha Mar resort project.
Christie and others in the Bahamian government were quoted over the past two weeks as being close to an agreement with one of several major operators to take over the stalled $3.5 billion project, idle for nearly a year because of a dispute between original owner Baha Mar Ltd. One of the board members of Baha Mar Ltd. said two weeks ago it would be up to the project’s main financier, the state-owned Export-Import Bank of China (Exim) to approve a new owner for the project.
Christie says that two titans of the industry are close to agreeing to take over the project. “Unlike my detractors, I believe that I am very close, very close in this,” Christie told the Nassau Guardian. “People will see it and will judge for themselves.”
According to Christie, legendary operator and Sun International founder Sol Kerzner and Mohegan Sun parent Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority have been negotiating with the Bahamian government.
“There is no circumstance under which the Bahamas government led by me will find acceptable undue delay of recommencing construction out here towards completion,” Christie told the Guardian. “Some of the world’s leading companies have applied, some here that would surprise people. Sir Sol Kerzner has come back with an equity fund to be involved. Mohegan Sun has come to be involved.”
Construction on Baha Mar stalled last year after disputes arose between the developer and its contractor, China Construction America—a subsidiary of a company which, like Exim, is owned by the People’s Republic of China—over what Baha Mar Ltd. Chairman Sarkis Izmirlian claimed was sub-par work and a series of missed deadlines that caused the original planned December 2014 opening to be postponed indefinitely.
Izmirlian, who invested $900 million of his family’s money in the project, was forced out in November when Exim placed the project in receivership. Christie says his government has been successful in its negotiations with Exim, and in attracting new suitors for the six-hotel mega-resort project.
“People speak of my optimism and I don’t apologize for that,” Christie said. “In our country, a lot of the decisions are made on confidence, who people are talking to.”
Christie’s optimism was shared last week by Joy Jibrilu of Bahamas Tourism, who told the Caribbean Journal the government has met with five or six potential operators. “As one potential party said to me, ‘Everything’s in place. It’s 97 percent completed, all the approvals are in place, and it’s just ready to go.’ And this is something that is very attractive.”
The Bahamian government has projected the completed resort—which comprises four new hotels and two revamped existing properties along with the largest casino in the Caribbean along Nassau’s legendary Cable Beach—will account for more than 12 percent of the nation’s GDP, as well as addressing the island nation’s chronic unemployment. Christie has been working furiously to get construction restarted and the project opened.
