IF A BUYER CAN’T BE FOUND, THE GOVERNMENT MUST PURCHASE THE GRAND LUCAYAN
WASHINGTON, D.C. — There is almost unanimous agreement among financial experts in The Bahamas that the Free National Movement (FNM) Government should not purchase the Grand Lucayan Resort in Freeport in its efforts to revitalize Grand Bahama’s economy and in the process address the island’s chronic unemployment problem.
The latest highly regarded financial authority offering this advice to the Government is Colina Financial Advisors (CFAL) President Anthony Ferguson, who was a guest on Guardian Radio 96.9 talk show “Z Live: Off the Record,” hosted by Zhivargo Laing, on Thursday, August 2.
According to a report in the Nassau Guardian, Ferguson believes the hotel is a “tough, tough sell” and suggested some very practical reasons for his dire conclusion.
“You don’t have the [air]lift,” the Guardian quoted him as saying. “You don’t have the entertainment. You don’t have any number of things to actually even get the people there” should the Government decide to purchase the hotel.
The sad aspect about this very accurate analysis of the problems faced by the Government as it contemplates purchasing the Grand Lucayan Resort is that the Government is well aware of these facts, and so is every other potential buyer of the resort.
These problems, of course, did not develop overnight. After The Monte Carlo, the first major casino opened in Freeport in 1964 in the Lucayan Beach Hotel, where the Grand Lucayan Resort is now located, Freeport gradually became a bustling tourism mecca. The Monte Carlo featured a variety of Las Vegas-style entertainment and there was a time during the early years of Freeport’s growth and development when there were five or six nightclubs that were jam-packed nightly with top-rated Bahamian entertainment and Marcellus, a popular restaurant downtown, remained open all night.
Back then, however, casino gambling was not as prevalent in the United States as it is today, and Freeport became a popular destination for high rollers on the East Coast of the United States who preferred a near-by gambling destination, rather than travelling across country to Las Vegas. Another attractive feature of the Monte Carlo casino, especially for whites from the southern United States, was that all of the croupiers were white, mostly from England, a factor which sort of embellished Freeport’s reputation at the time as a racist town.
Indeed, old-timers in Grand Bahama used to insist that there was a time when black Bahamians could not stay overnight in Freeport, although the veracity of that claim remains unproven. But there is no disputing the fact that racism was rampant in Freeport during its early years, resulting in the late Sir Lynden Pindling’s famous “Bend or Break” speech on Jul 26, 1969, at the official opening ceremony for the new Bahamas Oil Refinery Company (BORCO).
There are those who insist that this speech was the “turning point” in Freeport’s allure for tourists. But the truth of the matter is that when Freeport’s founder Wallace Groves signed the Hawksbill Creek Agreement on August 4, 1955, to develop acreages of Crown Land into what is now Freeport, tourism was not even remotely a part of what he had in mind for Freeport. His initial plan called for the establishment of an industrial complex. In its early stages, Freeport did indeed make tremendous developmental strides in this area, but things were not moving as fast and as profitably as Groves had envisaged.
It is not by accident that Groves shifted the trajectory of Freeport’s development towards tourism. Groves’ lawyer at the time was Sir Stafford Sands, head of the Development Board, which was responsible for promoting tourism to The Bahamas. It was Sir Stafford who used his considerable influence among the Bay Street Boys to get the Executive Council to agree to grant what was called a Certificate of Exemption to introduce major casino gambling in The Bahamas, with the Monte Carlo Casino being the first one.
Clearly, those “glory years” when tourism was indeed a strong “second pillar” of Grand Bahama’s economy will not return – at least, if not fully, to some degree — without a special effort by the Government to make it happen. Those were the years when the International Bazaar in downtown Freeport was alive with excitement, offering visitors the option of having a drink in a “Pub” in London, a “Bistro” in Paris or a “Biergarten” in Berlin, given the fact that replicas of such establishments from major cities around the world made the International Bazaar a popular attraction for visitors to Grand Bahama.
Those were the years when one was able to go nightclub hopping in Freeport and be entertained by very talented Bahamian entertainers like Sonny Johnson, Wendell Stuart, Jay Mitchell and Marvin Henfield – just to name a few of the outstanding Bahamian singers who with a little bit of luck were talented enough to become international stars.
Therefore, in my opinion, if a buyer cannot be found — and found soon – for the Grand Lucayan Resort, the only option open to the Government is to purchase it and do whatever is required to get it open. It can start by making a commitment to re-establishing in our hotels Bahamian entertainment and making it mandatory for them to be featured in entertainment venues of establishments that cater to tourists.
It is also a fact that Freeport is no longer an attractive tourism destination because there is really nothing for tourists to do in Freeport. Currently, after visitors to the island have done all the “nature tours,” what else is there for them to do? A strong effort must be made to re-establish the Port Lucaya Marketplace as an exciting place to visit and, of course, a company to manage and operate the casino must also be found.
