With 17 months until opening, Baha Mar has spent "just under 50 percent" of the proceeds of its $2.6 billion Chinese-financed loan to date, and has procured 90 per cent of all goods and materials needed to complete the $3.5 billion project, according to Senior Vice President of Administration and External Relations Robert Sands.
Involvement of Chinese workers in the construction of Baha Mar has "trended around 50 percent below" initial projections, while targets for Bahamian participation have been met, Guardian Business can confirm.
To date, of the $400 million in contracts promised to Bahamian firms, $240 million has been awarded, and the remaining $160 million remains "under negotiation".
Much of this remaining work set to go to Bahamian contractors will revolve around the "core" of the resort, including landscaping and hardscaping, such as parking lots, exterior works, the beach and pools.
Sands provided these updates in an interview with Guardian Business in which he spoke of the "tremendous progress" made to date on the mega resort.
All of the hotels except the Rosewood have been completed structurally, with just one floor of the Rosewood left to go before "topping off" in mid-August. On a site tour of the resort, Alex Haley, assistant project coordinator, told Guardian Business that the resort is now entering the "fit out" stage.
"We're moving into the rooms, the corridors, the food and beverage and the retail spaces. After that the facade is going on, the sliding doors, and the bathrooms are going in - modular bathrooms," said Haley. 700 of 2,000 fully-prefabricated "bathroom pods", imported from Orlando, have been installed into the rooms, saving significant installation time.
Going into detail on the Chinese participation in the project, Sands said that in total 2,200 work permits were awarded to Chinese workers, and not all of these may have been used.
"We're nowhere near the 5,000 that had been discussed. Initially when you are planning you have estimates and you have to plan for those estimates but the reality sometimes paints a different picture for you," said Sands.
In a recent interview with Guardian Business, Chinese Ambassador to The Bahamas Hu Shan said that China presently has 363 management staff from "ten different countries with ten different nationalities" in addition to 1,352 technical workers working at the Baha Mar site.
The Chinese ambassador suggested there are around 300 Bahamian workers working on site at present. Sands said that the total Bahamian construction-related jobs created to date stands at 2,000.
In addition to the hotels, which have entered the fit out phase, the golf course club house, the golf course itself and the convention center are all under construction presently. The golf course and the golf club house are being completed by Classic Golf and Wosely, both Bahamian companies. Both are due to be opened around June 2014.
This is also the time when Baha Mar projects that construction will finish, with the remaining months until the opening in December 2014 allowed for adjustment to the hotels and surroundings that may be requested by the brands which will be managing the hotels, including Hyatt and Rosewood.
"It's at that point when you take the structure and you hand it over to the brands and they come in and say 'could you change this light bulb, could you move this here...' so in June they should have the properties and a final tweaks or punch list.
But the construction would've been substantially completed," said Haley. Baha Mar has been extremely keen to promote the economic impact of Baha Mar and benefits of the project as a whole to The Bahamas and Bahamian people.
In the last two months it has created a small booklet entitled "Baha Mar: An Investment Paying Off For All Bahamians" and produced a short advertisement called "We Asked, You Answered" in which Bahamians talk about the great opportunities and enhancements they think the resort will stimulate for the country. The booklet outlines details such as Baha Mar's contribution to the GDP so far (five percent between 2011 and 2012), how much money Baha Mar projects it will generate toward Bahamian GDP for every $1 in concessions granted to it ($30), and what quantity of financing has accrued to Bahamian contractors out of the total.
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