So now we have an architectural rendering of the hotel planned for Coral Cove. Here is a bird’s eye view taken from the hotel’s marketing website www.ccgrenada.com
We made detailed objections to the hotel scheme earlier based on plans submitted http://www.coralcovegrenada.org/2022/03/31/why-planning-consent-should-be-refused/ but this rendering exposes clearly that:
- It is built right up to the boundaries – illegally close in fact
- Buildings are too close to the sea – illegally close also
- Buildings are too high – higher than allowed by the building regulations
- Buildings cover most of the site – exceeding the legal plot ratio for hotels
- The high buildings face east and will block the sun from reaching the sun bed and recreational areas by early afternoon – no sunsets here, just gloom
- All natural woodland has been removed
- All beach trees have been removed and the beach remodelled (never mind the endangered turtles).
The rendering is seriously inaccurate and misleading. For example:
- the building to the left in this view (to the south) is shown located over beach – in fact it is located over structurally unsound overhanging tiff caves and there is no beach, just rocks
- there is no beach or trees to the land south of the site – there is a big house and rocky cliffs.
The misleading rendering is clear in the view below. The building at centre is a three-storey gym/spa located on the boundary and shown above a nice tourist beach when it is in fact on overhanging rocks. The beach to the left does not exist and cannot be created – and it’s someone else’s land!
Note the ‘architectural’ mature coconut trees strategically drawn all over the site to soften the monolithic building. Where are they being taken from? And coconut trees aren’t ‘architectural’ green at Coral Cove – they’re yellow, brown and wizened in the fierce salt wind!
Other computer-generated renderings on the web site show boats where it is too shallow to float and distant mountains that don’t exist.
Here is a rendering of the planned hotel lounge facing and open to the Atlantic winds and driving rains! The designers have obviously never been near Coral Cove or they would know this is farcical. It would be a salty wet wind tunnel. Charis Group appears not to be getting proper information about the climatic conditions of the site.
The web site tells us there will be three “exquisite” restaurants. But the plans show only one – “exquisite” or otherwise! And it’s located illegally close to the boundary with neighbours.
Such is the hubris of Charis Group and their local advisors that they are now actively marketing the hotel as a Citizenship by Investment (CBI) scheme despite the fact that it has no planning consent: www.ccgrenada.com
We might ask too why the CBI Committee has approved the hotel as a CBI scheme when it has no planning consent. But then we can guess the answer to that can’t we.
The web site states that the hotel “will be internationally branded and offer an all-inclusive product”. What does that mean? It means that Charis Group has no hotel operator on board – “internationally branded” or not. It’s just marketing speak. We know that Marriot looked at this site some years ago and decided it was not suitable for a hotel. It is unlikely any experienced international brand hotel group will be seriously interested. They all know hotels in exposed Atlantic winds don’t work and they have all seen the disastrous experience of Tobago where it was tried.
And “an all-inclusive product” is tourism speak for guests paying an all-inclusive fee when booking their stay ie. all the money staying overseas.
The web site tells us that the developer is injecting 100% equity upfront (now where have we heard that before?). Why then is it aggressively marketing for money from passport purchasers? It even has a dedicated marketing agent exclusively to sell rooms in this hotel – Civitas International Limited. In fact the vast bulk of the web site is taken up with CBI information and invitation to sign up with application forms provided. Because like all the other CBI hotel projects this is really about buying a passport to facilitate easier travel and specifically easier entry into the USA and Europe.
But those advantages are about to disappear so there will be few takers. At some point Charis Group will realise this is not a viable project and will walk away from it. The question is how much damage they will have done to this delicate little site, its vegetation, it’s wildlife and its residential neighbours and the residential roads.
Oh for a national tourism strategy and enforceable zoning plan – and an end to selling passports!