ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada, CMC – The Grenada government agrees with Time Bourke Holdings (Grenada) Limited, reversing a previous government-approved land lease.
“This government has entered into an agreement with Time Bourke Holdings to purchase, to get back that property, and we have already paid the deposit, and you would have seen some notification of the acquisition in the gazette,” said Legal Affairs Minister Claudette Joseph.
The Radisson Hotel, which Issa Nicholas (Grenada) Ltd owns, is located on the property.
Time Bourke Holdings (Grenada) Limited has a freehold lease for the land and receives an annual rent of EC$250,000 (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents).
“I have to inform the nation that the negotiation got to a stage where we had to acquire the property, but notwithstanding the acquisition and the publication of the notice, the negotiations continued, and the parties agreed to a sale,” Joseph told legislators.
This is a second attempt at acquiring the property through acquisition.
The first attempt was made by a previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government headed by then Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, who had been in office here between July 2008 and February 2013. However, the acquisition was challenged in the High Court and dismissed.
“That property will be returned to the people of Grenada with absolutely no risk of there being a challenge to the acquisition to us having gotten ownership of the property. The matter is closed, and the purchased price of five million US dollars is included in the EC$60 million allocation. We had to negotiate the best deal to get it back,” said Joseph, the Attorney General.
Among the requests in the supplementary budget passed in the House of Assembly last week is a request for EC$60 million for the Ministry of Finance, which the government said is to facilitate the purchase/acquisition of critical assets/investments to support the government’s transformative agenda.
Approximately two months ago, Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell announced that his administration would ban the sale of lands on Grand Anse Beach and would present a Bill to the parliament ensuring that the policy becomes law.
Joseph also disclosed that the government is close to finalizing an agreement with True Blue Developers, the developer for Kawana Bay Hotel, located on Grand Anse Beach, and was also awarded a freehold lease from the previous Keith Mitchell government in 2016. The hotel is a project under the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) program through which foreign investors are granted citizenship in return for making a substantial investment in the island’s socio-economic development.
However, the hotel project stopped in 2020 after the developer challenged the last government’s decision. The matter is currently before the International
and then  Limited, reversing a previous government){kind=link}