Friday, August 7, 2009

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Cotton Bay developer timing completion with expected upturn in economy By INDERIA SAUNDERS ~ Guardian Business Reporter ~ inderia@nasguard.com: At least one second home development is soldiering on with construction plans at a steady, if slower, pace. The developers of the Cotton Bay project are timing its completion around the start of an up-tick in this economy. It's a finish date that won't likely see the $300 million South Eleuthera development open its doors anytime in 2010. "We continue to pace the development in such a way that we don't outrun the upturn in the economy," said Franklyn Wilson, the man behind the Cotton Bay project. "But I can't even get into when that will be." To date, more than 60 percent of 70-plus rooms at the development have been completed with all plans still intact for the second home/mixed use project. Wilson's statements, however, speak to unsteady times still ahead for this nation's real estate market. It's news that comes as developers in the Family Islands struggle to close sales deals that, little more than a year ago, were relatively easy sales. The change in fortune has everything to do with an American housing market that remains in the doldrums, although faint glimmers of hope now emerge in that neighboring market. In The Bahamas, Wilson is now pointing to a surplus of luxury hotel rooms on the market that outmatch the demand for such accommodation, indicating it's a situation that may subsist for the foreseeable short term. Pacing his development to the economy comes as home sales in the U.S. inch up from the depths of last year's mortgage meltdown. "I don't think anyone would be opening a hotel in Eleuthera at this time," Wilson told Guardian Business. "So we think strategically by doing it this way, no one would be able to do developments on Eleuthera and get ahead of us as the economy upturns. "Our saving grace in Eleuthera is that we have more than half the place built and we have no debt." The decision to pace the construction comes long after the company pulled sales advertising and shifted its concentration from pre-sales at this rather unprofitable time Wilson's project has been heralded as an example of what Bahamians can accomplish with regard to property development. When completed, Cotton Bay will be the single largest project ever undertaken by a group comprised of a sizeable number of Bahamian investors. "It took us 20 years to assemble the group of investors in Cotton Bay, a collection of 50 shareholders virtually without comparison in terms of the diversity, including some of the best known people in The Bahamas," Wilson pointed out earlier. His hope is that once the upscale project is completed, and all the bells and whistles are attached sales will follow, especially if the U.S. economy begins its own turnaround. Wednesday, July 22, 2009