How nice to meet a developer who calls a spade a spade. “When is it going to be finished?” I ask Mark Scott, head of sales at De Savary, the company behind Port Louis Marina (portlouisgrenada.com), a spectacular development in St George’s, the capital of Grenada and one of the unsung jewels of the Caribbean. He closes his eyes and does his sums.
“About seven years after the end of the recession.”
Optimism tends to be tinged with caution in Grenada, an island at the southern end of the Grenadines. In 1983 Ronald Reagan ordered American troops to prevent a Marxist coup and, although tourists started to trickle in over the next two decades, Hurricane Ivan hit in 2004 and the country had to start again. Developers got excited about its potential but now the crystal ball for Grenada is as murky as it is everywhere else.
But it will take more than a recession to stop Grenada inching up the league table of hot destinations. It offers some of the best sailing in the Caribbean and is a natural haven during the hurricane season.
There are already more than 160 berths in the Camper & Nicholson Marina at Port Louis and, when building is completed, there will be space for 10 super-yachts, as well as smaller craft. But it is the landside development at Port Louis that really exudes ambition. There are plans for a luxury hotel, high-end villas and apartments, bars and restaurants and a retail complex.
Peter de Savary – the man behind such luxury retreats as Skibo Castle in Scotland and the Abaco Club in the Bahamas – dreams of Port Louis becoming the Portofino of the Caribbean. It certainly has the potential. The harbour is one of the prettiest in the region, with the colourful streets of St George’s rising steeply from the waterfront, backed by mountains and forests.
Italian chic has already arrived. In the 11 years since they came to Grenada, Calabria-born Bernardo Bertucci and his wife, Wendy, have turned their boutique spa-hotel Laluna (laluna.com) into a much-loved getaway, where fine Italian food is just one of the treats on offer. They are now building a handful of new four- and five-bedroom villas, priced between US$2.9-$3.6 million (£1.8-£2.28m). Owners will have full use of resort facilities and benefit from a potentially lucrative rental pool.
There is another De Savary development at Grand Anse beach: Mount Cinnamon (mountcinnamongrenada.com), a cluster of villas set in lush tropical gardens with some of the best views on the island. Prices range from $600,000 (£380,000) for a one bedroom villa to $3m (£1.9m) for a three-bedroom villa.
For just under $3m (£1.9m), you could get an uber-modern three-bedroom town house at the Prickly Bay Waterside development (pricklybay.com), or if you prefer something more traditional, a four-bedroom beachfront villa (rollingsurf.com) in Lance aux Epines.
Like other Caribbean islands, Grenada tends to measure itself against Barbados. Even there, the world recession has bared its teeth. “Properties over $5m (£3m) are holding their own, so are the ones under $700,000 (£443,000),” says Terry Hanton of Altman Real Estate. “But those in between have struggled in the last three years.”
There are still signs of confidence and ambition – $50m (£31.5m) has been invested in the spectacular new Lime Grove development in Holetown (limegrove.com).
The super-rich and the merely well-off live cheek-by-jowl in Barbados. Properties at One Sandy Lane start at over $20m (£12.6m), but just a mile up the west coast you can get a one-bed apartment for just $300,000 (£190,000) in the Beach View condo-hotel (beachviewbarbados.com).
The traditionalists will probably stick to Barbados. But for lovers of the exclusive and exotic, the Spice Island exerts an ever-stronger draw.
(Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/investmentinproperty/9086456/Investors-go-hot-for-Grenada.html)
