By Ahmed ElAmin Local shareholders of the company formed to develop a resort at the former US Naval Air Annex remain confident that the financing of the project will be completed and a deal worked out.

"We do have the financing,'' Morgan's Harbour Investment Ltd. chairman Robert Tucker said yesterday. He declined to comment further on the reason for the delay in getting the project started.

He was responding to a story in Thursday's Royal Gazette in which Bermuda Land Development Company (BLDC) chairman Vince Ingham said the $250-million project was stalled because Morgan's Harbour Investment Ltd. was not able to secure financing.

Morgan's Harbour was picked after a bidding process in March last year as the company to develop the site but since then no work has begun at the 250-acre site.

In the same story Robert Davies, a key player in Morgan's Harbour, said the claim was not true and the company had a financial partner. Mr. Davies is chief executive of UK-based Renaissance Resorts International Corp., the company behind Morgan's Harbour.

Yesterday Mr. Davies said 15 months was not a long time to get a project going. It had taken him 18 months to get a similar project off the ground in France.

"It's par for the course,'' he said. "Our funding partners don't want to go without all the pieces in place. We need to finalise our agreement with the BLDC.'' David Hamshere, managing director of the Tess Group, which has responsibility for the English Sports Shop and Marks and Spencer, said he had met the financial partner and that as far as he knew all was well according to regularly updated reports he receives.

Mr. Hamshere said one of the reasons for the delay in getting the project off the ground was the hotel complex part of the development.

"Bermuda is going through tremendous changes in how hotel operations are run,'' he said. "Anybody that has run the numbers on hotels in Bermuda is concerned about whether they will make a profit.'' He said he was confident the project would be viable.

Annex "While progress may have seemed slow, there has been a lot of progress made,'' he said. "I was a little surprised by the statements made by the BLDC chairman. I am speaking as an individual who believes in this project for Bermuda. It's purely a question of time.'' According to the share register of related company Morgan's Harbour Management Ltd. other shareholders include Hycroft Ltd., UK-resident Geoffrey Dodsworth, Tractebel Development, local resident Edward Lawrence, and Renaissance Resorts. Mr. Lawrence owns the majority of Morgan's Harbour Investment Ltd.

while Renaissance owns forty percent.

However the share register has not been updated since September 1997. Late last year Mr. Davies said a local investor had taken a significant stake in the project. However he declined to name the investor.

GOVERNMENT GVT