Many people have welcomed the news that a proposal by a company called Unified Resorts Ltd. has received a special development order for a Ritz Carlton Hotel on the site of the Par-la-Ville car park.

Any new hotel developments are welcome, as are the plans on the site to include a residential segment, which should help to ease the housing shortage and will bring residents into the centre of the City of Hamilton.

It can be argued that there is demand for another business hotel, given that a large proportion of the Island's visitors are businessmen and women, although the operators of the Fairmont Hamilton Princess and other other Hamilton hotels may disagree.

This newspaper too has concerns that this property may turn out to be a white elephant, but one would assume that the developers, some of whom remain a mystery, have done their homework, as no doubt the Ritz Carlton — one of the finest hotel chains in the world — has.

What is of broader concern is that once again a special development order has been issued with very little public input. It is true that the hotel's plans were advertised in the Government notices, but one would have thought that this application would have been put before the Development applications Board, if only for an obligatory rejection given its scale, rather than getting fast tracked through the planning process.

That was the process taken by the Bank of Bermuda, and it was right that it received a full public airing. By contrast, the infamous Loughlands SDO received virtually no public input, and this application has received very little.

The claim that the developers were in a hurry in no way justifies an abuse of the planning process. It is precisely this kind of abuse of process that causes people to lose confidence in the planning process and in those entrusted with the good governance of the Island.