Pelican Bay which was to carry Embassy Suites brand eludes St Kitts like Ritz-Carlton, Six Senses and Radisson

It seems more evident that the Embassy Suites international hotel brand appearing on a resort on the coastline of St Kitts, remains unfinished under the Team Unity Government of Prime Minister Dr the Hon Timothy Harris.

Recently, the Radisson, the Six Senses and Ritz-Carlton brands have also eluded the hands of the four-year-old Team Unity Government.

Groundbreaking of the $90 million Pelican Bay condominium-hotel complex which was to carry the Embassy Suites brand took place on May 13, 2013 and construction began a few months later.

The 246-room T-Loft project has been under construction at St. Kitts’ Frigate Bay since 2014 and may not carry the internationally-known Radisson name brand. The word Radisson at the bottom of the billboard promoting the T-Loft project was recently covered by tape. No reason has been given or known for the action. Ground breaking for the estimated US$40 million (EC$108 million) project took place in December 2013. Since prime minister Harris took office in February 2015, work on the T-Loft project stopped and re-started several times at a slower pace.

In February 2018, Prime Minister Harris announced that a Ritz-Carlton Hotel will begin construction in September 2018 and open in 2021 on the Southeast Peninsula.

Dr Harris also announced and participated in a ground breaking ceremony for the construction of a Six Senses Resort. The construction was to begin in September 2018 at La Valle in Sandy Point. Dr Harris said at the time that the two five star resorts would have employed close to 800 Kittitians and Nevisians. However, no construction has begun on the Ritz-Carlton or the Six Senses resorts and the prime minister remains tight-lipped on both projects and other important national developments.

The Embassy suites project, like several other Citizenship by Investment projects fell victim to uncertainty when Prime Minister Harris assumed office in mid February 2015. His first order of business was to close down the Citizenship by Investment Unit in St. Kitts. The closure was done without consultation with stakeholders. That prompted Silver Reef investor Sebastian Mottram to tell WINNFM that the once the leading programme in the world, is now “at the tail end of the market” as competitors Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada and Antigua and Barbuda “steal the march and creeping into the market.”

Dr. Harris also closed the St Kitts and Nevis Consulate in Dubai for several months thus creating further havoc for scores of economic citizens who had fled their countries and were living in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and had already invested in several construction projects. With the Consulate in Dubai closed, the Passport Office in St. Kitts sent the new passports directly to Iran. Some passports were also sent to the St. Kitts and Nevis Embassy in Taiwan and were dispatched to Tehran. The Dubai and Abu Dhabi-based Iranians never received the passports and opted to take economic citizenship elsewhere.

Then there was the bombshell announcement by Prime Minister Harris to phase out the Citizenship by Investment Programme which caused an earthquake in the programme worldwide.

The acid response from developers and other stakeholders to Dr. Harris’ statement that his Team Unity Government was going to phase out the programme was one of “disbelief” with several of them privately expressing the view that the actions of Dr. Harris prior to taking office and since his appointment as Prime Minister, have had “devastating consequences for our investment, our businesses, our livelihood and the economic future of St. Kitts and Nevis.”

In a national broadcast on May 9th 2017 Prime Minister Harris referred to the St. Kitts and Nevis Citizenship by Investment Programme as “the platinum standard of the global industry, but at a news conference on May 10th, less than 24 hours later he stunned stakeholders including the Citizenship by Investment Unit, when he told journalists “the time will come in the not too distant future where we can as a people reach that level of development that we can easily exit from this programme.”

In a frantic reaction at damage control and looking for a way out of the debacle he created, Prime Minister Harris falsely accused SKNVIBES of misrepresenting what he (Dr. Harris) had said.

Although Dr. Harris demanded and extracted an apology from the SKNVIBES management, the Prime Minister did not publicly levelled a similar accusation against several other media houses including WINNFM which headlined its report: “CBI To Be Phased Out Eventually.” SKNVIBES report was headlined: “Alternatives to CBI Programme may be imperative.”

Labour Party parliamentraians Hon marcaella Liburd accused Prime Minister Harris of gross incompetence, noting in 2017, that after over two years in office, the Team Unity Government has not attracted one foreign direct investment to St. Kitts and Nevis.

“Dr. Harris has no alternative for stimulating the economy. He has no vision. He has no foresight and all the construction projects initiated by the past Labour Government are fast coming to an end,” said Ms. Liburd at the time..

Over the past four years, Dr Harris has also not only mismanaged a robust Citizenship by Investment Programme – now rocked by endless scandals – but has been presiding over a decelerating and shrinking national economy.

In 2013, the GDP for St Kitts and Nevis was 6.0 percent and 6.1 percent in 2014. The GDP has decelerated or slipped to 2.2 percent in 2015; 2.3 percent in 2016; 1.2 percent in 2017 and a projected 2.5 percent for 2018.