some time longer, it emerged yesterday.

The beach-front land in Warwick was slated to become the site of a $200 million Ritz-Carlton hotel back in 1993, but that plan collapsed when its Japanese financial backers suffered tremendous losses in the unstable Far East markets.

The land is owned by Bermudatel Ltd., a local company which was incorporated to handle the Ritz-Carlton deal. That company is represented by W.B. Johnson Ltd. LLC.

And a spokesman for W.B. Johnson Limited yesterday reported that the property development firm was "exploring alternate uses for the property'' and "how best to go about developing it''.

This included a variety of feasibility studies, continued the spokesman, Richard Stevens, but nothing concrete was in place yet, nor was expected to be in place in the next few months.