With Eleuthera’s Jack’s Bay luxury community now set to open sometime later this year, its Chief Executive Officer Richard Browning is urging the government to send vaccinations to Eleuthera and other Family Islands that cater to high-end visitors quickly, to get the economy running sooner rather than later.
The government received its first 20,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine last week on Wednesday – a donation from the government of India – and began vaccinating healthcare workers this week.
Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis has not said how many or if any of these of doses would be disbursed to the Family Islands.
Browning said it would be easier to vaccinate smaller Family Island populations first to get the economy up and running.
“It’s a good thing that vaccines have now come into the country and we’re looking for the rollout. And once we see the rollout of the vaccinations then we can start to open up. If we just look at numbers, there’s 250,000 people in New Providence and to vaccinate them is going to take 200,000 doses, which we haven’t signed up for yet, so we don’t see the end to that. There’s 11,000 people on Eleuthera and we need maybe 9,000 or 8,500 vaccines to vaccinate all of Eleuthera and then we can open up internationally and say we are a safe destination. Sometimes, it’s better to eat this big monster in little pieces, so that we can get back into the outside world,” Browning said in an interview with Guardian Business.
“I know we’re one Bahamas but sometimes we have to be one Eleuthera or one Abaco or even one Exuma, because they’ve all got small numbers. And with the small doses we’ve got, we could actually open up parts of The Bahamas to the international world and get the economy running quite quickly. As we stand in the moment, we’re in the queue and we don’t really see confidence in opening up the whole of The Bahamas until the vaccine is right through the country.”
The government signed a $400 million heads of agreement with Eleuthera Properties Ltd. for the development of the Jack’s Bay resort, golf course and marina project last September.
Developers have already pumped $100 million into the 1200-acre project, which features a 10-hole Tiger Woods golf course, clubhouse, restaurant, beach club, tennis courts and 18 club villas, among other amenities.
With 18 villas currently under construction, Browning said there is growing interest from international buyers.
“A year ago yesterday (Tuesday) was going to be our grand opening and I think a year ago last Sunday the prime minister stood up and said we’re locking down. So, unfortunately, our opening had to be cancelled and we were unable to go any further. We locked down for a few months like everybody else. Then we considered opening, but I think it was a bit of a false start in July and we decided that we would stay closed until we saw our way out of COVID,” he said.
“Travel is the big aspect for our guests. Most of our guests and potential purchasers will be offshore and are international people and there was obviously reticence to fly and restrictions on flying. So, that really made us make the decision to stay closed and we’re now looking for an opening later in this year.
“There’s so much interest. Prior to our opening last time, we were going to do a grand launch and we expected to probably entertain 150 to 200 people in that first opening event. Then the inquiries from them were just lined up, but unfortunately that stopped. So there is a pent up interest. COVID may have affected us in that way but in some ways it has proven the product. It has proven that people want to get away, they want to get to an off mainland situation where they can come, they can relax, they can work and they can enjoy the environment and I think that has proven that this is right for our marketplace now.”
Leading up to when the country was locked down under emergency orders last March, Browning said the property was employing 300 people last year and the majority were Bahamians living in Eleuthera. He said currently, employment is around 50 people, but executives are optimistic about that amount returning to hundreds.
“We brought a lot of work back to the community of Eleuthera and we were proud to do that. We carried a number of those employees through the downtime and we will ramp up again hopefully as soon as we come out of COVID-19 and we will re-employ those people. We think that the local community can provide the workforce, the amenities, the services, everything we need and we don’t need to import. This is a truly Bahamian project, the owners are Bahamian, the investors are Bahamian and 95 percent of our staff are Bahamian. The greenskeeper here who looks after the golf course, he’s a Bahamian. The intention really is to give our international clients a truly Bahamian experience and see what The Bahamas is all about. The real Bahamas, not a built environment where we hide all the natural aspects of it. We’ve got golf, we’ve got beaches, we’ve got everything that’s natural and its something that we really want to push,” he said.
“At the moment, we’re employing about 50 people and really all we’re doing is maintaining. We have done a little construction over the last year, we’ve kept things moving, in fact we have 18 villas under construction at the moment. We have infrastructure going in and as soon as we can see that this is a safe place to come for the future, then we will start to ramp up and we will get back to those 200-300 numbers.”
The post Jack’s Bay CEO: Focus on vaccinating Family Islands with tourism clientele appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/jacks-bay-ceo-focus-on-vaccinating-family-islands-with-tourism-clientele/
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