- We await the decision by the Planning and Development Authority. We need to plan how we can shift to judicial review quickly if the application is approved.
- We have pointed out to the Authority a number of discrepancies between the planning application forms and the actual plans submitted.
| Application Forms | Drawings |
| 100 rooms | 82 rooms/suites |
| 3 restaurants | 1 restaurant |
| Minimum distance to boundaries: | |
| 6’ 8” (2m) side | 2’ 4” (0.70m) restaurant to north |
| 16’ 9” (5.12m) side | 6’ 11” (2.10m) gym/spa to south |
| Floors: 6 (5 above ground; one below) | 4/5 above ground; 0/1 below (sloping site) |
| Total floor area: 5,117.47m2 | 5,946.23m2 (see footnote 1) |
| Lot cover: 25% | 33.75% (see footnote 1) |
| Building line: N/A | 14’ 3” (4.325m) |
Footnote 1: The drawings annotation states ‘Building footprint’ of 3,308.27m2 and ‘Building density’ of 16.15% but this appears to have not taken road reserves into account and may be for the rooms block only. The 33.75% mentioned above is our measurement from the drawings.
No attempt appears to have been made to forecast water or electricity supply needs or sewage flow generated. Water supply is a known problem in the area and biological contamination risks on this small site are high.
There are discrepancies also in the materials specified between the Application Forms and the drawings including roofing.
In our view, these are just further indications of the lack of real analysis and planning that has gone into this proposal – and certainly the complete absence of any community consultation for the outline or full planning applications. All the ‘distance to boundaries’ and ‘building line’ measures exceed the legal limits.
This ill-thought-out project will damage Grenada’s tourism brand.
- We met with the Chinese Embassy. They are not aware of the Coral Cove proposals and do not know anything about the Charis Group who want to develop it. They pointed out that although the owner may have been Chinese, if she is living in the US she may have taken US citizenship in which case she will have lost Chinese since China does not allow dual citizenship. [Remember that we have been denied direct access to Charis Group by its lawyers (Afi Ventour) and its agent (Barry Collymore) in Grenada – see http://www.coralcovegrenada.org/the-coral-cove-story/]
Since the architects for Charis Group are in Wuhan, China, it would seem likely that the owner is or was Chinese.
The Embassy expressed some irritation that our web site appears a bit anti-Chinese and we think they have a fair point – we are against this development because it is the wrong development for the site and location, not because it belongs to a Chinese owner.
So we have changed the intro to the home page on the site: www.coralcovegrenada.org
From what we understood also, the Levera developer is from Singapore not China. The contractors are Chinese – a semi state company. The contractors are leaving soon “because they have nothing to do”. We said you mean because they are not being paid! They said, “because they have nothing to do”! So what is the real story there?