What's happening with Royal Oasis?

By LEDEDRA MARCHE

Senior FN Reporter

lededra@nasguard.com

There has been no word on the Royal Oasis project since government made the last of its payout to former workers nearly a year ago.

The 427-acre resort property closed its doors back in 2004 following Hurricane Frances, rendering over 1,000 unemployed and in 2007, it was sold to the Harcourt Develop-ment Company for $33 million.

The property is made up of a casino, 965 rooms between the towers and the country club, 98 timeshare units and two golf courses.

The Ireland-based company revealed a year and a half ago, that it had intended to create the Crowne Plaza Golf Resort and Casino at the Royal Oasis into a high-quality tourist destination after the deal was complete.

And, that it expected the reopening of the resort would bring major benefits to the local area through increased tourism and local employment.

According to Harcourt, the Royal Oasis Resort was set to undergo major restoration work as well as the construction of new structures and facilities around the properties, including new timeshare accommodations at the country club, the towers and casino, correspondence issued last month revealed.

Renovation/upgrading of the existing timeshare buildings was also set to commence once Harcourt had acquired them, the new owners said, and the renovation of the pool/rotunda area and its associated food and beverage outlets at the Country Club including the golf facilities at the Ruby Golf Course were also in their plans.

Harcourt was also developing a luxury waterfront one and three bedroom and penthouse condominium complex in the neighbouring area called Suffolk Court — a five-building structure stretching five storeys high which is surrounded on three sides by water.

In the interim, as store owners in the neighbouring International Bazaar continue the call for the reopening of the Royal Oasis resort which was the lifeline to their survival, there remains questions as to the future of the property even with a new owner.

At the closure, Lehman Brothers, the former owners had owed severance pay to the workers, to government, $26.2 million in liability, including $13 million in casino taxes, $750,000 in Bahamas Immigration fees, hundreds of thousands more to a number of other agencies and $3.1 million to the Bahamas Hotel Catering and Allied Workers Union Pen-sion fund.

Government, former and present, has since paid out millions of dollars to former workers of the Royal Oasis and, in consideration of Harcourt buying the hotel, the former government had agreed to pay to Harcourt $4 million in what they call non-matched marketing money as soon as the purchase was complete.

Government had agreed to pay $4 million a year on a matched basis with Harcourt Development (Bahamas) Ltd. for nine years which amounts to $32 million.

The new resort owners were returned to the spotlight back in February when 21 workers of Harcourt Developments (Bahamas) Limited spoke out against them being wrongfully terminated.

The group also revealed then that they had filed a dispute with the Department of Labour against the company which, they claim had breached a 90-day contract with them.

The group of skilled craftsmen were employed for the construction of the Suffolk Court Condominiums as temporary workers for Harcourt. They say it was originally 32 of them and they still had six more weeks to go before the contract ended but the company kept the other 11 on to finish the work.

Harcourt Grand Bahama CEO Donald Archer, however, revealed that the company had felt it did nothing wrong and had acted within the framework of the law.

In an attempt to get an update on the Royal Oasis project yesterday, The Freeport News contacted Harcourt's Grand Bahama office and was told the Archer was out of office and, Minister of Tourism Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace did not return our call up to press time.

© 2009 The Freeport News