See the ‘What you can do’ page for email addresses.
Neither the location nor the site itself is suitable for a multi-storey, 80-90 room, conventional tourism hotel. It will cause extensive environmental damage during construction and operation and the design has had to violate planning law and building codes in order to accommodate a commercially viable number of rooms onto the site. The site is not big enough for a hotel with sufficient rooms to make it financially viable without causing unacceptable damage to the natural and human environments.
The development will completely destroy or seriously damage the natural habitat of marine, coastal and land wildlife including the nesting of “critically endangered’ hawksbill turtles, and rare ospreys, owls and doves.
The environmental damage will violate:
- the Fisheries Regulations 1987 (SRO. 9) protecting turtles
- the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, to which Grenada is a party and which the law requires the Planning and Development Authority to enforce
- various other regional and international conventions protecting species and marine and coastal eco-systems
- the Physical Planning and Development Control Act (No 23 of 2016) and the Land Development Regulations, (Section 27) [17th June, 1988] SRO 13/1988, 160 and the Land Development Regulations Cap 241A including violations of:
- the building plot ratio (the building footprint is too big as a percentage of site area)
- the proximity of building to the high water mark (building too near the beach and sea)
- the proximity of buildings to the site boundaries (building too close to boundaries)
- the allowed height of buildings (five storeys when only two allowed)
- insufficient on-site parking (31 spaces when over 100 required).
All of these planning and building regulation violations are necessary to fit the huge hotel onto the small site.
The environmental and ecological impacts will damage Grenada’s ‘Pure Grenada’ branding and its reputation as an unspoilt natural destination. It is not the kind of tourism we want.
In addition to damage to the natural environment, the proposed hotel will cause adverse impacts on the surrounding low-density residential area including the health, safety and welfare effects of noise, air pollution, excess construction and operational road traffic (thousands of dump truck and ready-mix vehicles), and the visual intrusion of a monolithic five-storey building in an area of single storey dwellings.
The microclimate of the site renders it totally unsuitable for a conventional hotel as designed. The constant strong Atlantic winds prevent sitting outside and the use of terraces. This is not Grande Anse. The hotel could rapidly become a commercial failure, pressured ‘down market’ to try to fill rooms and eventually neglected or abandoned – a decaying concrete eyesore having destroyed the natural environment.
The planning application is not accompanied by a relevant Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as required by law. The one submitted was produced in 2019 and was for a totally different development proposal. And it was deficient in many respects including not recognising that the site is a nesting ground for “critically endangered” hawksbills. The application is therefore incomplete, cannot legally and properly be decided by the Authority and should be rejected.
If there is to be any development at all on the Coral Cove site it should be on only the footprints of the existing structures, limited to two storeys, and with preservation of all the wild native land including all the trees on the beach that prevent beach erosion. A small lodge focussed on marine activity and conservation activities would be likely to gain community support. The community is willing to work with the developer to achieve a satisfactory development once the current application is rejected by the Planning and Development Authority.
Further details on the points above are provided in the earlier post ‘Why planning consent should be refused’.