St Philip residents, with the irrepressible Mac Fingall and nine-time Calypso monarch Red Plastic Bag, gave the thumbs down to a proposed multi-million dollar tourism development resort at White Haven and Skeete’s Bay they feel will have a social impact on those communities.
Bag (Stedson Wiltshire) and Fingall were part of a standing room only audience at the St Catherine Sports &?Social Club at Bayfield, that gave a disapproving nod to a proposal from businessman Paul Doyle to build 91 units across 50 acres on the stretch along White Haven that will have impact on that area and its environs.
Part of the access that leads to the proposed Beach House at Culpepper project is on family land owned by Fingall’s family and the former schoolteacher had no hesitation in refusing to sell the lot.
“I have rejected their offer because it is family land, my uncle used to own it, my brother used to own it, now we own it. They are not getting it. I don’t know how they are going to get in, but from what I gather is that they plan to go down Skeete’s Bay and come around. However they do it, is going to disrupt what we are accustomed to.
“Rich for these means money. Rich for we means the way we live . . . giving each other a breadfruit. We still live rich, we always used to live a rich life, but we didn’t know, we thought we were poor,” Fingall said.
Doyle, who is also the owner of the nearby Crane Beach Hotel, told an audience that included Member of Parliament (MP)?Michael Lashley and Olympic bronze medallist Jim Wedderburn, that he had bought the land at Skeete’s Bay about four years ago and had been developing and designing a single storey resort there that is intended to have 62 residences, two restaurants, with 160 feet set back from the cliff edge.
He said that every unit will have a swimming pool and a sea view, there will be preservation of existing trees and plans are in store to restore the Wiltshire Plantation House.
The application for the resort is now before Town &?Country Planning and so too is an application to turn the fish market at Skeete’s Bay into a restaurant.
