est. 2007

Barbados Underground

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Quotable Quotes By Key Actors On Barbados West Coast Development

west coast condos
West Coast Condo Development

The Financial Times (FT) published an interesting article yesterday (20 September 2008) about the development of our West Coast. The BU family has been a great advocate of questioning the high-octane development occurring on the West Coast of Barbados. Of concern to many is the fact that despite a change in government our coastal development policy appears to be unchanged. While we understand the importance of tourism and an investor friendly environment, the roller-coaster abandon with which coastal development is being undertaken even under the new government continues to be of concerned.

We had hoped that the Physical Development Plan for Barbados would have taken top priority before firm commitment was given to several projects to disrupt our coastline by the Thompson government. The fickle nature of tourism, more so in the current global economic environment makes decisions to develop our precious coastline a serious business. We have listed six quotes from the article which caught our interest from the FT article: What do you think?

BU wishes to thank a family member for the FT article.

  • He first visited the island in 1972, “surfing that first wave of discovery” as it became a tourist destination. Now, there’s a lot of development, he says. “But what can you do? It’s happening everywhere.” Properties come “in all shapes and sizes” – from quaint sugar plantation houses to cutting-edge condominiums – but they “don’t come cheap”, he adds. Always a renter, he now pays about $3,000 per week, up from $300 a week in the 1970s. Sale prices for a typical beachfront house have meanwhile jumped from $600,000-$700,000 a decade ago to $2m-$5m now …
Travelling Photographer Terry O’Neill
  • The island has never experienced a fall in the average value of second homes. Sure, there have been times when buyers were less frequent – [for example] after 9/11 – but this never lowered prices below the original value. The Barbados economy is very stable and boasts one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the Caribbean. [And the government] has created a very investor-friendly environment for foreign nationals: no entry taxes, minimal exit taxes, no alien landholding licence requirements, widely available foreign currency mortgages and high-quality legal services…
Suzanne Davis, President of the Barbados Estate Agents and Valuers Association
  • Resort developments are a popular option for buyers, They are secure gated communities with excellent communal facilities…
Paul Alleyne of Alleyne Real Estate
  • And new ones are appearing. , the 38-acre Crane Development in St Philip on the south coast as one to watch. “The views are awesome [and] it’s a resort dating back to 1887, so there are still the turrets and beams revised and corrected for the 21st century,” he says. Each residence has a marble bathroom and open-plan kitchen and the resort will include five restaurants, a spa, a fitness centre and tennis courts. One-bedroom apartments start at $445,000, while one three-bedroom unit is priced at $2.9m.
Yorkshire-born Michael Pownall, chief executive of the Sandy Lane Hotel
  • Not everyone is happy about the constant march of development.  “It’s sad that they’re lining the coast with five-storey apartment buildings. And I’m helping them!”
Architect Ian Morrison
  • “Barbadians are not known to be activists and they seem powerless to demonstrate against the momentum of foreign investment,” he says. But he thinks the current government has become more selective in granting planning permissions…You can get good mortgages, especially if you pay in dollars or sterling. The transfer tax has been reduced from 10 per cent to 2 per cent. And there’s never been more choice of high- medium- and low-end properties. In all, Barbados is a great location for a second home. In how many places within eight hours of the UK can you get weather like this?”
Steve Cox-runs boutique hotel and restaurant Lonestar

10 responses to “Quotable Quotes By Key Actors On Barbados West Coast Development”

  1. David Avatar
    David

    You got to love Ian Morrison’s comment. We give him credit for being honest.

  2. sarahpalin Avatar
    sarahpalin

    On a day when the Nation tells us “PRIME MINISTER DAVID THOMPSON is convinced that millions of dollars “bizarrely spent” during the previous Barbados Labour Party (BLP) Administration are now stashed in foreign bank accounts.”

    And,

    “He spoke of irregularities at the Rural and Urban Development Commissions as well as “strange” Town and Country Planning decisions.

    “You cannot begin to imagine what was going on in Barbados. You cannot begin to imagine the depths to which governance – or lack thereof – sunk in Barbados.”

    Let us stop and think how many Bajans ostensibly working to better the lot of all islanders are financially secure for the rest of their lives through the millions they took to Switzerland after receiving kick-backs for allowing the construction of “Sands.”

    And the new mall in Holetown, the abortion next to Sandridge’s in St. Peter and the greatest scam of all and an insult to every Barbadian – Port St. Charles.

  3. NO MORE MARINAS EVER AGAIN Avatar
    NO MORE MARINAS EVER AGAIN

    Guess what? Our public officials have been fleecing us blind. And squirreling their bribes and kick-backs in overseas numbered accounts.

    Who says so? Read this. http://www.nationnews.com/story/294679232051204.php

    Maybe the prime minister will now also tell us he’s reviewing all contracts and agreements issued by the previous government to build illegal constructions and will rescind all those reeking with the smell of corruption.

    And will allow none in his administration either.

    He could start with the proposed Six Mens Marina disgrace.

  4. 6hp Avatar
    6hp

    I have been hoping for a change in the rules for coastal development since the new government got in. Not seeing it, just hoping…

  5. David Avatar
    David

    It seems to BU that issues centred on the environment or other non political issues are only supported by Barbadians in the silly season.

    No wonder politicians think they can do what they damn please.

  6. Green Monkey Avatar
    Green Monkey

    From the FT article:

    Barbados is a great location for a second home. In how many places within eight hours of the UK can you get weather like this?”

    When oil is $500 per barrel, with Barbados an 8hr flight away (assuming its still possible to get a flight at all), will it still be considered a “great location” for a UK resident’s 2nd home?

    Here comes $500 oil
    If Matt Simmons is right, the recent drop in crude prices is an illusion – and oil could be headed for the stratosphere. He’s just hoping we can prevent civilization from imploding.

    By Brian O’Keefe, senior editor

    (Fortune Magazine) – Matt Simmons is as perplexed as anyone that it has fallen to him to take on OPEC, Exxon, the Saudis, and all the other misguided defenders of conventional wisdom in the oil patch. Why should one investment banker with a penchant for research be required to point out what he regards as the obvious – that from here on out, oil supplies can’t meet demand, and if we don’t act soon to solve this crisis, World War III could be looming?

    Why should a man who scorns most environmentalists have to argue that locally grown produce and wind power are the way of the future? Why should a lifelong Republican need to be the one to point out that his party’s new mantra – “Drill, baby, drill!” – won’t really fix anything and that his party’s presidential candidate is clueless about energy? That the spike in oil prices earlier this year wasn’t a temporary market anomaly and the recent retreat in prices is just a misleading calm before a calamitous storm? That we’re headed toward $500-a-barrel oil?

    SNIP

    Simmons was transformed overnight from an influential industry expert to an A-list pundit by the publication in 2005 of his book “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,” a fairly technical read which argues that Saudi Arabia’s oil supplies are much more limited than everyone thinks.

    Since then he has moved to the forefront of the peak-oil movement – a once fringe but now growing contingent of oil industry veterans, independent consultants, investors, and academics who believe that world oil production is at or near an inflection point, after which it will fall inexorably and fail to meet projected future demands. According to Simmons, we have already passed that peak. And while we’re not going to run out of it anytime soon, the era of easy oil is over, and the world is about to enter a period of convulsive change. (Hint: Learn to garden, and buy some comfortable walking shoes.)

    The soaring price of crude – it has risen from below $20 a barrel in 2002 to as high as $147 earlier this year – has helped thrust Simmons further into the spotlight. He was one of the main voices, for instance, in the recent oil-shock documentary “Crude Awakening,” and his book has now sold more than 100,000 copies. His willingness to make bold predictions about how high crude may go has made him an A-list guest for cable TV news programs and a go-to source for newspaper reporters covering oil and gas. In 2005, when oil was $58 a barrel, he predicted it would be at or above $100 within a few years. Now he sees it climbing to $200, $300, or higher. “There really is no roof on oil prices at this point,” he says.

    Being so outspoken, of course, invites criticism, and Simmons has endured plenty. But he has also won a lot of high-profile admirers. “Like most people who ignore conventional wisdom, he was scoffed at, ridiculed, and denied,” says commodities guru Jim Rogers. “And now, of course, people are starting to say, ‘Oh, well, I thought of that.’” Billionaire oil and gas investors Richard Rainwater and Boone Pickens both heap praise on Simmons’s analytical abilities. Maine’s Senator Susan Collins, a Republican who recently began consulting with Simmons on energy issues, says, “I think he’s issuing a clarion call that policymakers need to listen to.”

    Continued here:
    http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/15/news/economy/500dollaroil_okeefe.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008092213

  7. Rumplestilskin Avatar
    Rumplestilskin

    Green Monkey, excellent post, thanks for that.

    We who post on BFP have argued for more local production and less reliance on imports for the past two years.

    As the ‘old people’ say however, head ain’t brains.

    But, simple commonsense dictates that we return to a more basic lifestyle and cut usage of resources as much as possible, to reduce dependency on international bodies, to become less dependent financially, both individually and as a nation and for conservation reasons.

    Hopefully, this may also be tied, if I may humbly say, to a more spiritual lifestyle. This does not mean embracing any particular religion or cult, but understanding oneself and one’s relationship with existence. I will not go further on that here.

    Peace & Live Strong.

  8. The People's Democratic Congress Avatar
    The People’s Democratic Congress

    The Monday, September 22, 2008 Daily Nation newspaper reports that former prime minister, Mr. Owen Arthur, said at a meeting of the Barbados Labour Party St. Peter Branch, at the Alma Parris Memorial School in St. Peter on Sunday, that the (so-called) Barbados economy is on a slippery slope and that the David Thompson Administration is NOT doing anything to prevent the slide.

    Furthermore, it went on to report that Mr. Arthur said, at that meeting, that no major initiative was undertaken by the Democratic Labour Party since it came to office after the January 15 General Election, to put Barbados on a sound and strong development path and to galvanize economic activity.

    And, it also reported him as having remarked: “I am NOT saying that the situation that confronted this administration was easiest to deal with. It is an INTERNATIONAL environment that you can now see unfolding in the United States of America”, and that, ” it is a diffficult situation but there is a lot that can be done to STABILIZE the economy, there is a lot that can be done to NEUTRALIZE some of the impacts that are adverse but more to the point there is a lot that needs to be done to create a BRIGHTER future for the Barbadian society”.

    Nevertheless, the fact that we in the PDC have long been explaining on this forum and elsewhere that the so-called Barbadian economy is on a slippery slope – even LONG BEFORE the BLP was thrown out of office on Jan 15 – and have long been promulgating on this forum and elsewhere too that – since this DLP Government has come into office – it has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to halt this slide and has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to further stimulate the economy, must surely be salient facts that are or ought to be seen by the average person as terribly revealing of the dangerous path this country has been heading under DLP and BLP leadership.

    Certainly, it did NOT take the stark epihanous rip vank winklish partisan political behaviour of a former prime minister at a Branch meeting to implicitly acknowledge that he himself helped to DESTABILIZE the so-called economy of this country, and failed to properly plan – inspite of some paper National Strategic Plan that was produced under his stewardship – for the long strategic and developmental interests of the country, for individuals , businesses and entities in Barbados too to begin to understand the pervasive magnitude of the economic problems we are now faced with and the unfathomable depths to which we as a country have surely sunk.

    The truth is that Mr. Arthur should SHUT HIS DAMN MOUTH on these issues since it was he – more than any other person or group of persons in Barbados – when he was prime minister and minister of finance – that had been GROSSLY and RECKLESSLY MISMANAGING the material production and distribution affairs of this country by, et al –

    1) his recklessly allowing and encouraging the cost of living to skyrocket to very destructive levels;

    2) by his dangerously helping to take our National Debt to mindblowing levels (80 something per cent of GDP now);

    3) by his excessively borrowing monies from local and domestic sources, and proceeding to spend these monies on totally unnecessary and useless essentially non-money earning projects like the Kensington Oval Redevlopment Project, the GEMS Project, the Greenland Landfill etc.;

    5) by the same person drastically increasing the size of the Government at the great expense of far greater growth of the far more efficient and productive private sector – after having said at different points in time in the past – when he was Opposition Leader and Prime Minister and Minster – that he would allow the private sector to lead so-called economic growth in the country;

    6) by the said person blatantly refusing to sufficiently properly restructure and reposition the damn Barbados economy – and which – by that kind of non-action – has significantly meant that this same joke economy would NOW be in a bad position to avoid the worst of the external shocks it is now experiencing; and,

    7) by his otherwise enormously helping to devise or encourage a plethora of destructive IMPORT led s0-called economic stagnation strategies and policies for Barbados and its people, and at the same time substantially helping to devise or encourage too many unsatisfactory and regressive EXPORT led so-called economic dimunition strategies and policies for the country.

    The truth is that instead of so much partisan political posturing – of which we avow is offensive, laughable and shameless in nature – Mr. Arthur should TOTALLY ride off into the political sunset and stop making himself appear to some people in Barbados as a political nuisance. DLP/BLP, a total waste of time, we say!!

    PDC

  9. David Avatar
    David

    To all those thinking the Six Mens Marina was on hold through a public meeting scam where no member of the public attended and after members of the BU family said they were getting the project blocked.Construction has started in earnest.Check out the illegal plundering on the LH side of the road from Highway 1 to Mile and a Quarter.

    emailed by BU source

    We received the above email from our usual reliable source on the West Coast. It seems like it is business as usual on the West Coast.

  10. Avatar
    Anonymous

    It is business as usual on the West Coast – compliments of the DBLP. How they play us for fools that we are..

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