Ground was broken this week for Baha Mar, a $3 billion resort project in Nassau that will be financed by the Export-Import Bank of China and constructed with the help of about 5,000 Chinese workers.
A 3,800-room resort development will begin rising soon along Nassau’s Cable Beach in an effort to revive the fabled strand of white sand to its former glory. The Baha Mar resort will include six hotels, a new casino and an 18-hole golf course — but in an unusual twist, it will be built largely with Chinese financing and the labor of Chinese workers.
"It’s an exciting time for us and the Bahamas,’’ said Don Robinson, president of Baha Mar Resorts, the developer.
When the $3 billion project is finished at the end of 2014, it will rival the size of Atlantis, the 4,000-room water-themed resort that dominates Nassau’s Paradise Island, and could provide stiff competition. Baha Mar developers call the 1,000-acre project the largest “single-phase’’ resort development in the history of the Caribbean. Atlantis was built in three phases.
China State Construction and Engineering Corp., the largest construction company in China and the firm that built the Bird’s Nest stadium and the Water Cube aquatics center for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, will be the general contractor and will be doing all the concrete and steel structure work.
And in a departure from its usual lending to government and financial institutions, the government-owned Export-Import Bank of China will be getting into the hospitality business, providing $2.4 billion in financing for the project, said Robinson, a former Disney executive.
"This is certainly a break-through for the Chinese,’’ said Scott Berman, a hospitality consultant for PwC, the global advisory firm.
China State Construction also will be putting its own money into the project: about $150 million.
To round out the project, Baha Mar —whose principal owner is the Izmirlians, an international business family with residency in the Bahamas — is contributing cash equity and the land, said Robinson.
