Developers of the luxury Tucker's Point Club yesterday pledged to make a concrete announcement about the planned construction of a 104-room hotel on the 200-acre resort “very soon”.

At the same time, however, the developers officially opened the resort and residential community's 20,000 square-foot two storey golf clubhouse. And they reported that they had sold 75 percent of the fractional ownership in the 20-villa Residence Club.

President Ed Trippe said yesterday the group was committed to the hotel, already knocking down buildings where it would be located. The group was in the middle of tweaking plans with its architect - Nunzio DeSantis of HKS Dallas.

Mr. Trippe said: “We are working with the ministry, we are co-operating there. They are working with us. We need to go back to planning with a new set of drawings and when we go to planning we will be making our announcements and be very specific about what it is we're planning.”

Earlier this week, Tourism Minister Ewart Brown addressed the fact that the company was building homes and condos ahead of constructing the hotel. Some politicians and members of the public have voiced concern that projects like Tucker's Point have no intention of starting, let alone completing, their hotels, while benefiting from tax incentives granted to them by the Hotel Concessions Act.

Dr. Brown told the media: “Fortunately we have established a warmer relationship with Tucker's Point. There is now a commitment to build a hotel at the size we had agreed on so that hotel will be built. We are sorry it is a little behind schedule, but it will be built.”

The hotel plan now includes 104 rooms, up significantly from the period following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 when developers were thinking they would drop down to just 49 hotel rooms.

John Bush III, executive vice president residential development for Tuckers Point Club, said the company appreciated the frustration over the delay in actually constructing the hotel, but “we have already spent millions of dollars specifically on the hotel and the hotel site and the hotel infrastructure and the engineering and architectural studies that are going on”.

“We sized the golf clubhouse and the Beach Club for the capacity of the hotel, not just the membership base, so we have already invested our money in anticipation of the hotel coming and we continue to spend enormous amounts of money on a weekly basis on the hotel work that is going on right now. We are very serious.”

Tucker's Point is designed as a mixed use community - with luxury townhouses and estate homes, a golf, beach and tennis club, and the 104-room hotel to replace the former Marriott's Castle Harbour and a Residence Club. Last year the company reported that all 29 of the estate and town homes at Ship's Hill, ranging in price from $1.8 to $3.4 million, had been sold.

The resort has now secured six buyers for the 11 more expensive Shell Point homes which start at a price of $3.5 million.

The Residence Club, which is due to open in August this year, has secured 150 of the 200 fractional owners for 20 luxury two, three and four bedroom villas with prices that originally started at $280,000. Mr. Bush said: “We now have 150 families, mostly from North America and it is the standard tourism base that have bought in so we are reaching the $50 million sales mark which is very significant.

“We have had several rounds of price increases so the people who bought early have seen prices go up and people continue to buy at the higher prices.”

Mr. Trippe adds that with the 60 bedrooms in the Residence Club and another couple of hundred rooms in the resort homes, the resort will eventually have more than 400 rooms.