Plans for a 10-storey, four-star hotel on West Bay Road have been approved by the planning board after developers modified their original proposals.
The $120 million Hyatt Centric will be built on the site of the former Margaritaville resort, which is slated for demolition, and will have 316 bedrooms, a rooftop restaurant and a ground floor bar/restaurant, two pickleball courts, three pools and a pool bar.
Tourism needs
Planning permission, subject to various conditions being met, was granted by the board who said in the minutes to the 17 Sept. meeting that the new hotel “will assist in meeting the needs of the tourist industry” and was a “high quality of design”.
The application had originally been for a larger hotel but, after consulting with neighbouring residents and statutory agencies, the developers, 269 West Bay Road Ltd, decided to reduce the size of the new hotel from 352 bedrooms to 316 and to reduce the building width by 28 feet to improve light and air access for adjoining parcels.
There had been some objections raised over the impact of the construction works as well as the loss of light from the new building, which is several storeys higher than the existing one.
However, the Central Planning Authority said that loss of sunlight, overshadowing and loss of privacy were not material planning considerations and that the building height, including the rooftop area, met with existing planning regulations.
The revised plans also added more parking spaces, relocated the proposed pickleball courts away from residential properties and added a dedicated bus stop. Construction work will be limited to Monday-Friday, 8am to 5pm.
West Bay Road site
The 5.43-acre site, which has changed hands many times over the years, was sold in December 2024 for $8.6 million. It was originally slated to be a hotel called Paradise Manor in the early 1980s but was left uncompleted for several years before a group that included several American country and western music stars bought the property, completed the construction and opened it as Treasure Island Resort in 1987.
A planning notice for the redevelopment of the site into a 10-storey hotel designed by Trio Architecture was first submitted to the Department of Planning in February 2025.
Trio Architecture previously worked on the transformation of Treasure Island into the Margaritaville resort. Trio is also working with the Hyatt group on its 10-storey Grand Hyatt hotel, which is nearing completion at the former Pageant Beach Hotel site, next to The Wharf Restaurant & Bar.
The new hotel will be only the second Hyatt Centric property in the Caribbean. Last year, it opened its first in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The company has said that the Hyatt Centric brand “meets the rising demand from guests and members, especially Millennial and Gen Z travelers, for more contemporary accommodations with playful details, sophisticated furnishings and socially connected spaces”.
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“…. loss of sunlight, overshadowing and loss of privacy were not material planning consideration…..”
So what exactly are material planning considerations then?…..
Impact on surrounding places be damned??
The CPA are clearly in the pockets of developers.
The current CPA, most members of which were retained from past administrations, is hell-bent on overdevelopment. But there’s likely underlying encouragement to approve ANY and EVERY application simply for the revenues of application fees. Of course, they justify their actions by claiming added stimulants to our economy; construction revenues and the fictitious “jobs for Caymanians” rhetoric, which we all know is BS. One member personally told me we need 100k+ population and CPA is seemingly doing its part to accommodate the development required for that level of population. Strange formula though, let’s keep building and importing more people. The CPA seems disconnected from the general will of the people and, indeed, the platform of containing development on which the present Government ran.
But what of the impact on lagging infrastructure, creation of more traffic, increased sewage/garbage creation and disposal, the demand impact on public utilities, etc., etc.?
It seems like CPA’s response to those queries is, “that’s not our problem, we’ll just keep approving anything which come before our Board”.
Disgusting!
You might well be right.
But the CPA is required to follow the law.
There has been a hotel on this site since the 1980s.
The current owner is entitled by law to replace the existing hotel with a new one.
They are also entitled to build to 10 floors high.
The high cost of the land on 7 mile beach makes it not cost effective to build 3 or even 5 floors any longer.