One significant hurdle has been cleared in the plans to make Morgan's Point a resort hotel destination – and to make Warwick estate Southlands a national park. But there is a long way to go.

Still, the likelihood that Southlands will be saved, and that the tourism industry will get a flagship resort — and a $2 billion injection into the economy — is welcome news.

So why the caution?

First, Bermuda has seen a great many hotel developers come and go over the years with projects that never came to fruition.

Secondly, it's good news that, according to developer John Ryan, several hotel groups have approached Southlands Ltd., but the Bermuda business model for hotels remains marginal, and there are no certainties that they will sign.

Third, despite all of the work that has been done, the plans remain relatively vague. Certainly, there are plans for a 325-room main resort hotel and an 80-room boutique hotel along with unspecified numbers of condominiums and beach villas.

Fractional units for sale may also be involved. Other facilities include a golf course, boat club and shopping plaza.

It is likely that these residences will be built early on in order to finance the hotels. The real question then is whether the hotels will be sustainable, because at some point the money from the sale of fractionals and the like (and that market should have recovered by the time these units become available) will not last forever if the hotels themselves are not profitable.

But the major uncertainty concerns the environmental clean-up, for which no price has been given, and perhaps cannot be given. But there is no doubt that it will cost tens of millions of dollars.

Premier Dr. Ewart Brown again said yesterday that talks are underway with the US Government to see if it would assist financially with the multimillion dollar clean-up.

The betting here is that no such help will come, because Bermuda accepted a deal over the former US bases already.

That that deal was a bad one is neither here nor there. The US had no legal obligation to do more and Bermuda gave up the moral argument when it took the money.

Dr. Brown also affirmed a key concession; that the Bermuda Government is "principally responsible for delivering the land clean". In the end, the Bermuda taxpayer is likely to foot most of the bill.

Yesterday, the land transfer was being trumpeted as a great achievement by the Government and evidence of a promise kept.

But spin only goes so far. The record shows that Dr. Brown fought hard against the land swap and then stalled the project and belittled the Bermudian developers.

Indeed, if anyone deserves credit for the deal, it is the environmentalists who fought the Southlands development, and former Premier Alex Scott who first mooted the idea of the land swap.

The environmentalists in the BEST group also demonstrated that they are pragmatists as well when they supported the use of Morgan's Point as a "brownfield site" and the Southlands developers do deserve some credit too; they could have bulldozed ahead but instead accepted a compromise.

Remarkably, all of this is prelude. The genuine hard work now begins.