Above: construction at the Kittitian Hill project in St Kitts (CJ Photo)
By Alexander Britell
ST KITTS — This may be a relatively small island, but it seems hard to go anywhere here without seeing a new hotel or condominium project popping up.
That’s because the Caribbean’s smallest sovereign country is undergoing a hotel development boom.
Indeed, the twin-island federation of St Kitts and Nevis is seeing a significant uptick in hotel and resort construction and development, including Kittitian Hill, which will soon open its first hotel and developments like the Pirate’s Nest, the Prime Hotel, the Imperial Bay and the planned Koi Resort & Residences.
A Park Hyatt resort is also under development at the Christophe Harbour project on the country’s southeastern peninsula, with a targeted opening date of the end of 2015.
That’s in addition to a number of hotel renovation projects, including the Royal St Kitts Hotel, which plans to complete its overhaul by 2015, the nearby Frigate Bay Beach Resort and the Ocean Terrace Inn, which launched a renovation project in 2013.
The island’s largest hotel, the St Kitts Marriott, completed a two-year, $5.5 million renovation project last year.
Above: the site of the planned Koi Resort and Residences (CJ Photo)
St Kitts’ cabinet approved another new resort project this week, the Heldens Estate Condo Resort & Residences, which will include more than 200 condos, apartments and villas in the St Paul’s parish.
The multimillion-dollar project would include restaurants, bars, tennis courts and swimming pools and could create several hundred jobs, according to Information Minister Nigel Carty.
“The project will provide hundreds of employment opportunities for tradesmen and other local people in the design and construction phase, and will provide many long-term employment opportunities in its operational phase,” Carty said in a statement.
Much of the development has been fueled by the country’s Citizenship by Investment programme, which offers the opportunity for citizenship in exchange for different levels of economic and real estate investment. The programme is the oldest of its kind in the world.
