On March 3, 2005, three wealthy Bermudian businessmen held a meeting with the Department of Tourism to talk about a plan to build a five-star hotel on the Island.

The talks have carried on ever since — for almost five years, in fact — but there is still no sign of the hotel and Brian Duperreault, Nelson Hunt and Craig Christensen have finally had enough.

The men have spent an untold amount of money developing plans and countless hours thrashing out ideas.

They insist they have the financing, the contacts and the detailed designs to make a luxury resort a reality — but, for reasons they can't fathom, they believe Government doesn't want it to happen.

The trio — all directors of Southlands Ltd. — have now thrown down the gauntlet to Premier Ewart Brown, telling the Tourism Minister in a letter dated Monday, February 15: "We can wait no longer."

And Mr. Duperreault, speaking publicly for the first time about the negotiations, slammed the Premier for the way he has dealt with the local company.

"I think we have been damaged in this process," he told The Royal Gazette in an exclusive interview. "We have spent a lot of money. We have done plan after plan after plan. It's not inexpensive to do development plans the way that we have been asked to do them. We are being asked to do more than others who aren't from Bermuda."

The global insurance chief said most jurisdictions were desperate to stimulate their economies with large-scale developments and would go out of their way to accommodate interested parties.

"There is a big wide world out there," he said. "There are many places that would love to have you come with your energy and your finances and your creativity to develop something. I would speculate that if we didn't live in the Island, we would have been long gone by now."

The Southlands saga is not news to anyone with a passing interest in the Island's current affairs.

Plans for a hotel on the pristine 37-acre plot in Warwick were mooted in the early 1990s, but never came to fruition. In December, 2005, Mr. Duperreault, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Christensen bought the land and incorporated Southlands Ltd.

But their idea to build a hotel complex with luxury chain Jumeirah on the stretch of South Shore land met with a storm of protest from the public, as did the granting of a special development order (SDO) for the project by Government in August, 2007.

In 2006, a suggestion was made that Southlands Ltd. exchange the entire Southlands estate with Government for part of the former US Naval Air Station at Morgan's Point, Southampton.

The idea appealed to the three businessmen, who claim their aim was always to prevent gratuitous development on the Southlands site, and discussions began.

"We saw that it would be a real benefit to the country," said Mr. Duperreault. "We understand the way that everyone felt about Southlands. Hell, we felt the same way ourselves. It's a wonderful piece of land."

The fact that the land exchange has never been completed is well known.

Just last week, Shadow Tourism Minister Michael Dunkley claimed Southlands Ltd. appeared to have been "sidelined" after the Premier revealed Government was looking at other opportunities for Morgan's Point.

What hasn't been revealed before is the behind-the-scenes appeals from Southlands Ltd. to the Premier to see the deal through to completion.

The company has provided The Royal Gazette with copies of two letters sent to Dr. Brown urging him to move the project forward, as well as an extensive timeline detailing the relentless toing and froing between the two sides.

Mr. Duperreault wrote to the Premier on September 19, 2007, to urge "intense negotiations" to hammer out an exchange. He said in the letter that the swap would result in "considerable delay and substantial financial loss" to Southlands Ltd.

But he added: "It has always been the objective of the shareholders of the company, who are all Bermudians, to create a project which they and Bermuda will be proud of and which will assist Bermuda in moving forward in a number of ways."

His letter said further delays would cost the company more and that time was of the essence. "We recognise that as the directors of the company we have to move this project forward as quickly as possible," Mr. Duperreault wrote. "We do not have the luxury of time to have a long discussion or negotiation."

The former head of ACE Ltd. and current president and chief executive officer of Marsh & McLennan Companies wrote that he understood Government would clean up the environmental damage and pollution at Morgan's Point within 12 months.

And he asked that a committee be formed to represent and bind the Government in the negotiations, ending the letter: "We hope that an agreement can be reached which will be a win/win situation for all."

A land swap agreement — which was not legally binding — was signed on April 2, 2008.

The signatories were Dr. Brown, Mr. Hunt and Mr. Christensen, as well as Cabinet Ministers Paula Cox and Derrick Burgess, who along with the Premier formed the Tourism subcommittee overseeing the project.

Southlands Ltd. made a presentation to the committee a week later and was advised that legislation needed to complete the exchange — the Morgan's Point Development Act — should go before the House of Assembly before the end of June, 2008.

It never has. Instead, according to Southlands Ltd., the Premier has kept moving the goalposts by making demands that didn't appear in the land swap agreement.

Those included insistence on a trophy golf course — an idea later dropped after eight redesigns because Government decided it wanted to keep 40 acres of Morgan's Point, leaving too little land.

Mr. Christensen said Government originally thought there was 260 acres available at Morgan's Point and offered to swap 80 acres for the resort and lease Southlands Ltd. additional land for a golf course.

"They did not recognise that parts were carved off in the Rockaway area," he said. "The acreage was 243 acres."

He said the golf course would have used 160 acres, leaving just three acres for government use.

Southlands Ltd. was told in November 2008 it had to get a development partner on board before the exchange could happen — but finding potential partners to commit without the completed land exchange proved tough.

Still, the three men fulfilled the demand and signed an agreement with developers John Ryan and Egbert Perry last June.

They also came up with a requested detailed plan of a 500-bed hotel, which they presented on December 3, 2009 and, unusually, managed to secure equity financing for the development — another unexpected stipulation from Dr. Brown.

But none of the above was enough, it seems. Dr. Brown told the media on February 11 that Government had yet to see a satisfactory plan for Morgan's Point and that it was "looking at other opportunities".

The three directors wrote again to the Premier last week expressing their frustration. They questioned why he asked them to meet in January with an "unprepared" developer who wanted to build a smaller scale resort than had ever been discussed.

The letter said: "His concept as presented is not a plan and we have expressed our opinion previously to you that it was very doubtful that such a concept of 40 hotel rooms and 20 villas would be financially feasible at Morgan's Point, nor would your suggestion of 80 hotel rooms and 40 villas work as a financially viable project at Morgan's Point."

The company asked why they should switch developers after finding partners with a "proven track record of success".

"Southlands is owned by Bermudians," the letter stated. 'We have watched while non-Bermudians have been granted a long lease on Government property. They have not been required to have project financing in place, as has been clear from the various news reports of their hopes to shortly have financing in place.

"Unlike them, we have not asked the Government for land; we are trading land that we own for land owned by the Bermuda Government."

Mr. Christensen told this newspaper: "What Government should be doing is embracing the locals. They are doing precisely the opposite."

The final line of the letter reads: "Southlands Ltd. now requests that the Bermuda Government conclude the land swap without further delay." A reply from Dr. Brown has yet to be received.

Mr. Duperreault said he was bitterly disappointed at how things had worked out and questioned why Government had failed to even start the clean up of Morgan's Point almost two years after the land swap was signed.

"I'm a firm believer in the truth and the truth will prevail," he said. "We started out in good faith. We fulfilled every demand they asked.

"I can just go back over the chain of events over nearly three years and say if there was a desire to do this, it would have been done by now."

He said Jumeirah could still be in the picture but the likelihood was that another five-star brand would be involved if the land exchange happened. "Our contract with Jumeirah was for Southlands," he said.

Mr. Duperreault wouldn't be drawn on what the company will do with Southlands if the swap falls through — but it's clear the men haven't given up.

"We would like to do this. I wouldn't be going this long if I didn't think it was the right thing to do. Of course, there is the economic side of things but I could probably have picked a lot of things to do other than this."

Mr. Christensen added: "When the idea of the Morgan's Point swap came up, philosophically for us, it was an easy thing because we could see Southlands being preserved.

"We agreed behind the scenes that the preservation of Southlands was the thing to do. We want to do something to be proud of. We are not going to lose this."

Dr. Brown's press secretary said yesterday: "The Premier is making no comment on this."