Yeah. I drove past it several times before I stopped and decided to see what the buildings were all about. I couldn't believe there were no signs or boards on windows or anything. No front gate or anything. It's just... there. Very odd.
The hotel was boarded up back in 2006, but as time went by, the plywood got "borrowed".
I didn't bother with looking over the property too much after our visit last month, but given that there's now reportedly squatters occupying the SUP building, plus there's been 2 x 25kg of cocaine found floating on the beach in April, its probably not a particularly safe place to visit anymore. On the east side, I did notice that the kitchen cabinets in the timeshares have somehow gone missing...they somehow unbolted themselves from the walls and walked away....golly!
Do not know how true this is but I was told by people on Bonaire a long time ago that Divi closed Tiara because they wanted to have a gambling casino on the Brac and the govt would not allow it. So Divi resorts choose to spend alot of $$$$ on Bonaire and open a new resort north of Flamingo Beach where the old Sunset Beach Hotel once stood..They started clearing the property but seems to have run out of money, property has been vacant and unused for years now...
As a corporation, Divi has had cash flow problems for 20+ years. I can remember on one occasion being asked if I could change the credit card that I had on file at the dive shop; the claim was that Divi "...no longer accepted..." that flavor of CCard (as of the new month). What came out eventually was that Divi had owed that CCard company a bag of money somehow, and because Divi wasn't paying, the CCard company started to garnish new customer charges as their repayment. Since this was cutting off Divi's cash flow, their response was to stop having customers use that CCard and use a different one (which wasn't cut off).
EDIT: the work on the Flamingo Beach property on Bonaire probably stopped because Divi ran out of money ... again.
I believe 5050user has it correct. To add (if memory serves) Martin mentioned that the resort can't be sold for either trust or some other red-tape legal issues. Something ridiculous has to be the reason to let a property simply rot away until only the land value remains. btw rats? what rats.....and what dump?
The 'lien' that some Timeshare owners have put on the property has nothing to do with Divi's mismanagement that caused the place to shut down. Divi could sell the property today, but in doing so, they would be legally obligated to promptly settle the claim from the now-breached Timeshare owner contracts. Divi has not made any buy-out offer to the remaining timeshare owners...the best they've done is to offer a continued business relationship with the left-over 'crumbs' of excess inventory at some of their other properties.
EDIT: once again, "no money = no activity" applies.
On a similar vein at the end of the road there is also a vacant house that I imagine is the most westerly point on the Brac. Anyone know that story? Looks like a
really nice spot, if not rather noisy from the crashing waves. That I could live with however...
That house is known as "End of Island". Before Paloma, it had a second story; all that's left today is basically the foundation.
There is no business reason for Divi to do anything with the property. As long as they don't need the cash flow, they have no financial incentive to be in a hurry to sell, restore or redevelop the land. No one is forcing them to keep the property up and there's no taxes to pay, so why not just let it rot? The property is like money in the bank. Much like the blown-out, abandoned oceanfront houses on Grand Cayman's east end, the value is in the location not the buildings. The one true thing about oceanfront property is that they aren't making any more of it, so they have nothing to lose by sitting on it until they get the right offer for the land.
Please understand I am not in any way saying it's a good thing, but I do understand why it sits and rots.
Yes, it costs them "nothing" to hold onto it, since there's few relevant annual taxes to pay. Insofar as the prospects of getting it fixed up to be able to revive it as a money-making enterprise (with a better business plan), Divi simply lacks the cash (or financial credit) to make it happen...and that was even before the post-2008 tightening of credit terms.
Well...I could have sworn I read something on TUG about the Divi owners involved in some kind of settlement for a small amount but I can't find anything now. If you've ever tried to find lawsuit info in Cayman you know it's hard to come by. They don't seem to have a freedom of information act and stuff is harder to find than in the US. So nevermind about the legal stuff. I'll just go back and sit in the corner.
Technically there is a Freedom of Information Act in the Caymans which was enacted a couple of years ago, but even as a timeshare owner, it is difficult for me to obtain useful information on "my own property". Plus there's local politics: the FOI office has had its budget slashed by the (current) Premier, which has resulted in a huge backlog ... effectively a denial of information, which all occurred just prior to yesterday's national election. Golly, isn't that an amazing coincidence?
The more that I look into Cayman politics, the more that I'm glad that our financial loss from this Divi mess was a relatively small (5 digits) one; "Never Say Never", but it is going to take a miracle for me to ever consider making any significant investments in the Caymans ever again, plus I've learned a lot of what to watch out for - - timeshare contracts are a particularly slippery form of contract which is invariably one-sided against the buyer: I've not heard the term
"indentured tourists" before, but it really is quite appropriate ... I've used the terminology of the 'Call Girl Principle' to describe it too.
-hh
