Barbados Bails Out Four Seasons Project

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Jan 26th 2010 at 9:02PM

Last month I wrote about the stalled Four Seasons Barbados project now it seems the project is getting help from the government of the island nation. The Wall Street Journal reports that in order to keep the project going and save jobs, the government of Barbados has agreed to guarantee a $60 million loan from a Caribbean bank to restart construction. In return the government will get a 20 percent equity stake in the project. But like all bailouts, it's risky, should the developer go belly up the Barbadian taxpayers will be stuck with the bill. While $60 million may be a drop in the bucket compared to the U.S. bailouts of car makers and banks, it's a lot for the small island nation which has a population of just about 270,000 people.

The project has attracted celebrity buyers including Simon Cowell and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Construction of the project stopped a year ago and debts began to mount on the property. The project calls for 36 luxury villas and a Four Seasons hotel. All the villas also offer services of butlers and other staff from the Four Seasons hotel whenever the villa owners are in residence. The villas will be outfitted with the finest finishes and antiques sourced form around the world. About half of the villas have been sold at prices from $11 million to $18 million apiece. The Four Seasons website proclaims that Paradise Beach Limited will recommence construction on site before the end of first quarter of 2010 and that the overall development master plan and the original hotel layout will both be revised to provide optimum use of the land but keeping all of the original facilities. The developers are still charged with finding another 19 buyers ready to pay high prices for the villas in order to complete the project and at least for Barbados' sake we hope they find them.

Tags: bailout, barbados, development, four seasons, FourSeasons