The United Bermuda Party is wrong to attack the Southlands Development, argues its senior statesman Maxwell Burgess.

He said environmental concerns have been exaggerated and new development is vital to revive tourism.

He told The Royal Gazette: “I am concerned about the political and adversarial views the party takes on efforts to redevelop tourism — in particular the building of new hotels.”

Luxury hotel chain Jumeirah is lined up to build a resort on the 37-acre Warwick site.

Mr. Burgess’s UBP colleague Cole Simons said last month that a slew of fast-tracked proposals could “bury Bermuda’s efforts to pursue a sustainable future under an avalanche of hotel developments and disregard for regulations designed to protect the public interest”.

Mr. Simons had said the Southlands project raised concerns about the influx of foreign workers and its impact on the country as well as the loss of open space — although he did say the UBP had not come out totally against the project.

Mr. Burgess said he had spent a lot of time being critical of Government’s efforts to revive tourism. “Now the Government has set out how they propose to deal with it in real concrete terms, quite frankly I find it nothing short of disingenuous some of the comments passed on the Southlands property in particular and the redevelopment programme in general.”

He said environmental concerns were being addressed and the critics should look at the plans. There had been efforts to protect woodland reserve while the developers had shown green credentials by not pumping sewage out to sea but treating it themselves, said Mr. Burgess.

And the developers were also looking at converting seawater for use at the hotel.

“They are heading in the right direction and I don’t get a sense they have been given sufficient enough credit for their contribution.”

Redeveloping tourism would not come without a price, said Mr. Burgess. “Failure to get tourism up and going quickly in my view has far reaching consequences — not only for our GDP but we are offering real live alternative forms of employment to the lucrative insurance and reinsurance industry.”

He said people always questioned how new hotels would be staffed given the labour shortage. “They are going to come from the pool of students we have today,” he said.

People would be attracted back into tourism if they saw it was moving ahead.

“When we show people we are back in business, they will get back in the business of seeking employment in that industry. So the development must come first of physical plant.”

And he said Hamilton desperately needed the new hotel as it sought to bring new life into a dead town. “One of the reasons at ten o’clock at night thieves feel they can snatch handbags and the like is the likelihood of being seen by somebody else is reasonably remote.

“We have to find ways to bring this city alive.”

The hotel was just one small part of it, said Mr. Burgess, who added that the waterfront needed to be redeveloped as Bermuda lagged behind its rivals in the Caribbean region.

Similar opposition had helped stopped the Ritz Carlton property development in Warwick in the early 1990s and the country had suffered, said Mr. Burgess.

“We entertained, maybe slightly too much, the concerns of constituents and others. We did it at the expense of that hotel being built.”

And he noted the PLP had opposed that plan too.

“We know what Oppositions can do — and I am saying let history not repeat itself.”

He said hotel industry shouldn’t be seen as a last resort but a viable option, deliberately chosen by school leavers and he urged Government to use cash from the boom to fund scholarships to get youngsters back into tourism.