Exclusive: A 'Grand' makeover for failed South Shore development?

Plans to transform the Grand Atlantic into a condo hotel could include elevators to take guests from the property down to the beach.

The new development will include 100 hotel suites as well as a bar, restaurant, spa and swimming pool for patrons. The controversial housing complex on South Shore has been the subject of intense criticism and speculation from when the project first broke ground to when almost all units failed to sell.

But now the complex looks set to become a holiday resort after Government agreed a memorandum of understanding with Caribbean-based consultancy firm MacLellan & Associates. Speaking exclusively to the Bermuda Sun, the firm’s CEO, Robert MacLellan, said he was hopeful work on the new project, which will be marketed as the Bermudiana Beach Resort, could begin by the end of the year, once final funding details had been ironed out.

He added: “Our most successful recent project like this is the Cap Maison hotel in St Lucia, which opened in January 2009 in the teeth of the financial gale but has yet proved to be successful. That is the kind of model we would be looking to emulate with the Bermudiana Beach Resort. 

“We are still at a very sensitive stage of the process and there is an awful lot of work still to do over the next 120 days to pull everything together. 

“We also understand the sensitivities and the difficulties there have been to island economies over the last decade. But we believe this project can work and a benefit of condo hotels is that they provide more jobs through construction as well as the services that will be permanently on site.”