Overseas Development: Harcourt Developments, the company behind Parkwest, is following the success of its hotel in Antigua with plans for more apartments and a hotel, writes Jack Fagan.
Harcourt Developments, the Irish-based property company headed by Pat Doherty, has acquired development opportunities on the Caribbean islands of Grand Bahama and Tobaba following the huge success of its Carlisle Bay Hotel in Antigua.
Harcourt has invested $65 million over the past four years in the hotel which has had rave reviews in the world travel press. The Daily Mail has gone even further, describing it as "simply the best hotel in the world".
It is hidden away in a sandy horseshoe-shaped bay on the sheltered south coast of Antigua with half a mile of beach and a rainforest as a backdrop.
All 88 studio and three-bedroom suites face the ocean and the facilities include a state-of-the-art spa, two restaurants which regularly feature in good food guides, a 45-seatcinema, nine tennis courts and what The Financial Times described as "the coolest library in the world".
The hotel is run by Gordon Campbell Gray, the man behind One Aldwych, a classily minimalist hotel in London which is the current European Hotel of the Year.
A beach suite at Carlisle Bay costs $600 a night from May to mid-December for two; it is $850 in high season.
With Carlisle Bay Hotel safely under its belt and trading exceptionally well, Harcourt has acquired development land near Freeport on Grand Bahama island. The island is a 25 minute flight from Miami and has seen major investment in its infrastructural facilities, including its airport and seaport, now the largest in the eastern Caribbean south of the US. An estimated 70,000 acres of beachfront land is about to be developed for hotels, golf courses and holiday homes.
Harcourt is already the second largest property investor on the island, having acquired the entire sub-division known as Bahamia to add to its substantial beachfront, canal-front and golf course on adjacent land.
Harcourt has set up a subsidiary company on the island with a staff of 25 to develop its first tranche of apartments in the coming months. The Irish company's investment to date stands at $30 million dollars.
The third Harcourt venture in the Caribbean is on the isaland of Tobago. Here the company is parrt of a joint venture with a local group in a 600-acre site comprising a sandy bay and adjacent rainforest land. The plan is to embark on a similar development to that at Carlisle Bay. The investment here is $20 million.
In Ireland, Harcourt's largest development in recent years has been Parkwest, off the M50 in west Dublin where the company has also paid .
