Construction of the Marriott-flagged hotel is scheduled to start at month end with the diversion of sewerage lines in the Kingston area where the hotel is to be built, President Bharrat Jagdeo said yesterday.
At a press conference held at the Office of the President, Jagdeo told the media that it was not true that the negotiations had stalled between the “third party owners” and the Marriott as reported in the January 13, 2007 edition of the Sunday Stabroek.
He said the “Marriott people” told him yesterday morning that the discussions were not stalled and they were preparing to issue a statement to this effect.
Asked how soon construction would begin and who the investors were, Jagdeo said the project would start as soon “as we turn the sod” and he hoped that would be “in the not too distant future” when the investors would also be known.
He said that as part of the deal the investors would be laying the lines for the diversion of the sewerage pipes from the present site, which is in proximity to area identified for construction.
A New York-based Guya-nese contractor Mike Ahmad of Adam Development Enter-prises Inc who has the contract to lay then pipelines, would likely build the hotel.
The US$700,000 project to divert the lines, which take care of the city’s sewage, was initially awarded to Courtney Benn Contracting Services Limited. But it was withdrawn because the investors wanted some assurances about the sewage lines around the area, Jagdeo had said.
The Sunday Stabroek had reported that negotiations between a “third party owner” for a possible Marriott-flagged hotel in Georgetown were stalled after more than two years, but that work on the sewage system meant to accommodate the hotel was due to start early next month.
The Marriott source this newspaper had contacted had initially told the Stabroek News that there was no Guyana project in the making but after some probing, the source said that the discussions, which had begun in early 2006 had not moved along.
In October last year, the President had told the media that by the end of 2007, he expected the negotiations would have been completed, at which time details of the investors and other arrangements would have been revealed.
This group of unknown investors was not the first to be interested in securing the Marriott franchise. Only the year before, a prominent Guyanese businessman had been told by Marriott International that because of the challenging lodging market in Guyana and the difficulty of justifying a significant lodging investment in the market, Marriott was unable to participate in such a project in Guyana at the time. Marriott had indicated that it would have kept his documents on file for future consideration. (Miranda La Rose)
