Bahamas News

A potential foreclosure looming over four properties owned by the Ginn company will in all likelihood have no impact the mega mixed use resort that the company is developing in West End, Grand Bahama, according to Minister of State for Finance Zhivargo Laing.

The Ginn company is struggling to pay the debt it owes on four high end resort communities and has failed to make interest and principal payments last month on $675 million in bank debt.

It is now attempting to reach an agreement within 30 days to restructure its debt.

On Tuesday, Minister Laing told the Bahama Journal that Ginn officials had briefed the government on its financial predicament and had sought to assure officials that there was no need for concern.

“We are advised that what is now happening with respect to the defaulted loan has nothing to do with two of their properties and one of those properties is the West End property,” he said. “So the funds that they have for the development of that property in terms of the infrastructure are set aside [in] a separate account.”

The Ginn Sur Mer site expands over 1,957 acres of oceanfront beachfront property in Grand Bahama.

The company has plans to develop 4,400 condominium and hotel units centred on a 20-story tower with 1,800 single-family residential sites.

This is the largest project that the company has undertaken and it is expected to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into Grand Bahama’s troubled economy.

The project, which began in December 2005, has a price tag of $4.9 billion.

Land clearing of almost 2,000 acres is 70 per cent complete, according to Ginn Sur Mer’s website.

The company, which is based in Florida, has more than 40,000 acres in its land bank, according to the resort’s website.

Ginn Resorts is an umbrella company for a host of other Ginn companies. In Central-Florida, Ginn is developing a “reunion” resort just south of Disney.

Resort officials reported that Ginn is also planning to develop ski sites in Vermont and Colorado.

The Ginn development at West End will be developed over 20 years, according to the company’s agreement with the Government of the Bahamas.

As a result of Ginn’s outstanding debt, Standard & Poor’s recently lowered its credit ratings on Ginn-LA and its ratings on the loans.

“This is not a default yet,” emphasized Ryan Julison, a Ginn spokesman.

Source: Bahama Journal