The de­vel­op­ers of a 46.27-acre prop­er­ty on an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive es­tate at Kil­gwyn Bay in south-west To­ba­go are plan­ning to con­struct an all-in­clu­sive, 500-room, five-star lux­u­ry re­sort, just me­tres away from the run­way at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The an­nounce­ment of the con­struc­tion of a five-star ho­tel at Kil­gwyn Bay was first made last No­vem­ber by Far­ley Au­gus­tine, chief sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, as he opened the To­ba­go stand at the 43rd edi­tion of World Trav­el Mar­ket at the Ex­Cel ex­hi­bi­tion cen­tre in Lon­don, Eng­land.

“I’m not at lib­er­ty to give the name but they are about to start con­struc­tion in June 2023 at the Kil­gwyn Bay area. And guess what...in this area no ho­tels ex­ist. So you are talk­ing about vir­gin land, vir­gin beach op­por­tu­ni­ties, even more suites to make the ro­mance sweet­er,” Au­gus­tine was re­port­ed to have told the news con­fer­ence in Lon­don.

Last Mon­day, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty made avail­able for pub­lic com­ment doc­u­ments com­pris­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion for a Cer­tifi­cate of En­vi­ron­men­tal Clear­ance (CEC) for the project.

Those doc­u­ments dis­close that the Ap­ple Leisure Group and a Guayagua­yare-based com­pa­ny named DSM In­vest­ments Ltd ac­quired 46 acres (18.7258 hectares) of land in Kil­gwyn Bay, Tyson Hall, south­west To­ba­go and are de­sirous of con­struct­ing a 500-room re­sort on ap­prox­i­mate­ly 26 acres (11 hectares) of it.

Ap­ple Leisure Group is the lux­u­ry re­sort-man­age­ment ser­vices, trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty group, which was iden­ti­fied by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dur­ing a post-bud­get 2020 pre­sen­ta­tion, as the “rep­utable in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised brand man­ag­er” that had been se­lect­ed as the pre­ferred op­er­a­tor of the Mag­dale­na Grand Beach & Golf Re­sort.

Im­bert has made no sub­se­quent an­nounce­ment about the Ap­ple Leisure Group op­er­at­ing Mag­dale­na, which is lo­cat­ed at Low­lands in To­ba­go and re­mains as a state-run prop­er­ty.

The Hy­att Ho­tels Cor­po­ra­tion an­nounced in No­vem­ber 2021 that it had en­tered in­to a de­fin­i­tive agree­ment to ac­quire Ap­ple Leisure Group (ALG), for an es­ti­mat­ed US$2.7 bil­lion in cash.

Ma­yaro busi­ness­man El­lis­ter Lewis is the founder and main share­hold­er of DSM In­vest­ments Ltd, which en­tered in­to a ho­tel mar­ket­ing and man­age­ment ser­vices agree­ment with AM­Re­sorts, a part of the Ap­ple Leisure Group. The date of the agree­ment was not dis­closed in the doc­u­ments.

A doc­u­ment in the CEC ap­pli­ca­tion in­di­cates that the 18.7258 hectares of land were trans­ferred to Kayso Per­sad Ram­per­sad and Robert Sanowar in 2003. The doc­u­ment does in­di­cate when the land was ac­quired by the Ap­ple Leisure Group and DSM In­vest­ments.

The in­tend­ed start date of the con­struc­tion of the ho­tel is Oc­to­ber 2023 and the es­ti­mat­ed project cap­i­tal is put at $1 bil­lion.

The 500-room com­plex is en­vis­aged to com­prise a 200-room, adults-on­ly Se­crets Re­sort and a 300-room Dreams Re­sort, which will ac­com­mo­date fam­i­lies.

“In each case, the two ho­tels will share the ser­vice ar­eas, mak­ing the plot ra­tio of the land and its en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact much low­er, be­cause op­er­a­tional­ly they will work as a sin­gle ho­tel and adopt the build with na­ture (BwN) coastal de­sign con­cept,” ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted by FCL Fi­nan­cial to the EMA. Daniel Lam­bert, the founder of FCL Fi­nan­cial, is the project’s fi­nan­cial con­sul­tant.

The plans for the re­sort en­vis­age 12 restau­rants/eat­ing places, eight bars, nine kitchens, pools, jacuzzis, wa­ter parks, spas and mul­ti-pur­pose and ten­nis courts.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 55 per cent of the prop­er­ty is cov­ered by red man­grove, while black man­grove ac­counts for 15 per cent of the man­grove trees on the prop­er­ty.

The in­tro­duc­tion of the EIA, which was con­duct­ed by Op­ti­mal Geo­sciences and En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions Ltd, states: “This pro­posed de­vel­op­ment is slat­ed to in­crease the room of­fer­ings of the is­land, there­by cre­at­ing jobs and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits, grow­ing the tourist clien­tele and in the process en­hance and di­ver­si­fy the To­ba­go tourism prod­uct.

“On the con­trary, the po­ten­tial degra­da­tion, loss and ad­verse ef­fects of nat­ur­al habi­tats as well as im­pacts on the noise cli­mate, air qual­i­ty and sol­id waste fa­cil­i­ties, are some of the po­ten­tial neg­a­tive im­pacts of the project.

“This EIA re­port al­so pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive as­sess­ment of the po­ten­tial cu­mu­la­tive im­pacts as­so­ci­at­ed with the ho­tel de­vel­op­ment and its af­fil­i­at­ed ge­o­graph­ic sphere of in­flu­ence.

“These con­cerns are high­light­ed through the stake­hold­er in­volve­ment, pub­lic in­ter­views and pri­ma­ry base­line da­ta stud­ies con­duct­ed for this EIA.”