The Savannah Hotel has been sold to the Bernie Weatherhead-led Sun Group.
Chairman Weatherhead confirmed this to the DAILY NATION last Thursday, saying “We are in full control of the hotel at this stage,” and that “the purchase agreement has been completed”.
While declining to disclose the price he paid for the last of the hotels in the GEMS Project, which was on the market since 2019, Weatherhead said: “They went to tender on two occasions . . . and I paid $2 million more than any tender that ever was made.”
“I had a contract that I leased Savannah and it had an option to buy and to make sure in the island that it was not something given to Bernie Weatherhead, they went out to the international market,” Weatherhead added while disclosing he had previously been approached by the Hard Rock International group who “asked if they could join with me in purchasing it, but I told them ‘no, I have my own direction’.”
He plans to expand the 93-room hotel which sits on approximately 3.32 acres of land, by adding another 140 rooms, 40 of them “in the immediate future”.
Weatherhead also disclosed his Sun Group would be buying additional land adjacent to the Savannah, currently occupied by the former Hastings Police Station, for the expansion, as well as properties “across the other side of the road in front of Savannah,” for further expansion of the hotel’s operations.
“We have already bought the three houses across the other side of the road in front of the hotel and we have paid the deposit on Brigade House. We want to transform all that area into staff facilities and a little shopping area with bistro-type operations where our guests would have a prime spot to watch horse racing.”
The Sun Group also owns Sugar Cane Club, Anthurium Suites, Sunny Isle Car Rentals, Time Out at the Gap, and Worthing Court Hotel, the last two being former Gems hotels.
Weatherhead also shared plans to extend the Sun Group’s footprints along the Bay Street corridor.
“I have made a big investment in Carlisle Bay and basically bought up all the properties between Copacabana and the Selbys’ house on Lower Bay Street,” he said, adding that some properties on the opposite side of the road, including the historic Martineau House had also been acquired by his company.
He also hinted that a project called Forest Safari which he designed some years ago for more than 30 acres of land he owns in Joe’s River, St Joseph, might be “back on the table” at Government’s request.
“I never got off the ground with it. They have asked me to put it back on the table,” Weatherhead said.
He believes Barbados’ tourism has “a good future in a lot of things”, despite “crime that seems to be raising its head higher and higher”.
“What I would say off-hand, is what we have not done, is to develop more things of interest for people, whether they are Barbadians or tourists”.
It is one reason he said he created Haymans Market, his latest venture, “feeling that this would be a focal place for everybody in Barbados, whether it is Barbadian or foreigner”. (GC)
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