A multimillion-dollar branded hotel and close to 400 houses will be placed on the site where the Arawak Cement Plant now stands at Checker Hall, St Lucy.
On Friday, management of TCL Group, owners of the plant which has been in operation here for 41 years, announced that they and Jada Group, one of the major construction firms on island, had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to launch two developments including affordable housing, high-end homes, hotel accommodation and commercial areas on the 190 acres of land overlooking Maycocks beach.
Arawak ceased its clinker operations in 2023 but continued to operate as a grinding plant.
David Inglefield, chairman of TCL Group and general manager Gonzalo Rueda Castillo, told the Sunday Sun the plant would now be decommissioned and the equipment removed. There are just over 40 people working at the plant and some will be made redundant following negotiations with their trade union.
“We have always been firmly committed to supplying the Barbados market with best quality cement and that commitment remains,” Castillo said.
“So the cement that will come into Barbados will come from within CARICOM, from Trinidad or Jamaica, for example, so the supply to the market will continue. So, we will not need a grinding mill or an operation at that site. That site could be far more purposefully used as a residential area; and that’s what’s going to happen.”
Philip Tempro, chief executive officer of Jada Group Inc., added that they were awaiting planning approval for the project, which he estimated at US$500 million. He said the housing would be the first build.
High-end hotel “We envision a branded high-end hotel with residences. We intend to use the water to its fullest advantage and any topography of the land to create something that’s quite spectacular which will bring a substantial amount of not just revenue to the island, but jobs. A project this size will probably bring about 500 jobs in just the construction,
and after development, you would see a project this size probably employing 700 to 800 people full-time, potentially more.”
Tempro said while the north was the most undeveloped part of Barbados, it was getting a major boost with other tourism projects such as Pendry Hotel and Sandals’ Beaches Hotel.
“This will be the new northern light and probably will be one of the bigger ones that the country has seen and so it’s with great excitement that we want to make this announcement today to you guys and express to Barbados our partnership going forward and how we envision bringing significant foreign exchange jobs and future income.”
While Tempro did not disclose the price of the houses, he assured they would be hurricane resistant and that the company would utilise photovoltaic systems on each.
Castillo noted: “We feel very morally satisfied that this direction is in keeping with the Government’s want to develop the country in sustainable tourism and we do not envision this to be a high-density tall impact project.
“We made sure that whatever we did was in the best interest of Barbados and that particular area. We looked very carefully at how we could utilise what is a very valuable asset, which is the land, of course, and what we wanted to do is do something that had legacy value to the people; not only the people of the area, but also Barbados as a whole.” (MB)
