Auberge hotel cancelled, Peninsula developers remain confident

By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

Backhoe tearing down wall of abandoned hotel

In an exclusive interview with this media house, LeGrand Elebash, Chief Operating Officer for the CHDCL stated that the developers of the Southeast Peninsula “remain committed to creating employment opportunities for Kittitians” and are confident that the planned Auberge hotel would be replaced by significant residential development.

“We received an extremely strong response to the release of lots we had planned at Sandy Bank Beach and this caused us to rethink our development plan,” Elebash said.

He was also quoted in a recent release as saying that by not building the scheduled Auberge hotel [CHDCL] “will be able to further strengthen the appeal of this new oceanfront community, to attract people who want to buy homes and be part of a community here”.

The same release cites “potentially significant delays in having the hotel in place” as another reason for the cancellation, but Elebash did not elaborate on the specifics of that statement.

While fifty lots were originally slated to be built for the residential development next to the Auberge hotel, Elebash said that many more homes will can now be constructed on the available land space, though he could not specify a number.

He did note that the CHDCL may still pursue building a hotel along the pristine beachfront, but it would “more than likely be smaller in scale”.     ~~Adz:Right~~

When asked how building a smaller hotel might adversely affect the employment of locals who had hoped to benefit from the development, Elebash said that Auberge investors did not pull out of the project entirely, but simply decided against building the hotel. The CHDCL believes that any lost jobs will be created elsewhere in the development.

“Our company offered positions to all of the local operational employees of Auberge-Firesky after they ceded operational control to Kiawah Development Partners and we are happy to say that fifty-eight of those fifty-nine accepted our offer”.

Additionally, the COO said his company remained “very optimistic” about the ground breaking of the Mandarin Hotel, which he opined was moving forward on schedule and would likely be started “before the middle of next year”.

When asked about the abandonment of the hotel, St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister, Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas told the media that, “the agreement that we signed was that we would have two five-star hotels”.

The PM assured the public that Kiawah Development Partners would be held accountable for the contract and two five-star hotels would be delivered, even if one of them was not the originally planned Auberge.