What’s Going On With Kings Beach Hotel?

You would think by now we should have heard something about the much publicized public auction that supposedly was to have taken place a month ago on May 27 to recoup the US $¼ M owed in back taxes. You would think the dead-tree media would have made a note somewhere to follow-up with their readers on an asset as important to the country at large as is/was Kings Beach, but as often is the case in Barbados the laugh-out-loud "media" has dropped the ball again. It is left to us unpaid hobbyists in the blogs and other new media to read the tea leaves and bring the public up-to-speed.

Again, as is often the case in Barbados, because nothing is in the press does not necessarily mean that nothing is happening or has happened. On the contrary, it usually is at times when we are hearing nothing that quite a lot is going on or has gone on in secrecy that short-changes the public. If it were not for a sharp-eyed, conscientious butler, today there would be a ring road around Mullins Beach like the ones at Sandy Lane and Heywoods and we would be all lamenting the loss of yet another important window-to-the-sea; it is that important the public knows what is going on in tourism in Barbados particularly on the politically sensitive west coast.

Having said all of that, this blogger has learned from the word-on-the-street (whoever or whatever that is) that Kings Beach Hotel now has “new owners” (how and/or whenever that happened) and that they are now considering what to do with the property - whether to keep it as a hotel or convert it into condominiums. We know there were plans two years ago to tear down the hotel and put in its place a 5-floor/50 unit luxury condo block to match the 5-floor/60-unit luxury condo complex currently going up next door under the name - St. Peter’s Bay Condos. Are those plans now being dusted off? We do not know, but what we do know is that there is probably no salvaging the old hotel from the present caddywhompus condition visited upon it by paros, thieves and scrappers.

If the word on the street is correct, it is to be regretted that government, particularly the new one whose patriarch and Father of Independence often resorted to this spot, missed a rare opportunity to reclaim it for all of the people - locals and visitors alike. As it will now most likely turnout, a few well-heeled trust-funders will probably gate it off from the rest of us so that they can private-jet into GAIA to be Bentleyed to Mullins Bay for two or three weeks of the year their bespoke apartments are actually used.