$300 Million Olo Caye Dream Faces Courtroom Reality

A stalled cruise port project is getting a new name, a new developer and a bold three-hundred-million-U.S.-dollar vision. But as Piero Dibattista and his team pitch Olo Caye as one of the Caribbean’s largest ports of call, the former Stake Bank site remains tied up in receivership and an ongoing court battle. Isani Cayetano reports.

 

Isani Cayetano, Reporting

Three hundred million U.S. dollars, two hotels and the potential to welcome close to one million cruise passengers. That is the vision for Olo Caye, a proposed tourism destination just off Belize City. The development would revive the site of the unfinished Stake Bank Cruise Port, which has spent years caught in financial and legal trouble. The first phase calls for a staging facility at mile five on the George Price Highway, followed by an expansion of the island.

 

Luis Ajamil, President, Bermello Ajamil

“There is no way of operating this island without expanding it, because even if you keep only a very small fraction of people on the island, they will still need space to move around. So, the idea will be the same things they showed. It will be highly environmentally driven. It should fit right into the Belizean experience. We would need to develop certain pools so we can create some space. A lot of beaches, pristine beaches. So, this thing will look like its totally not manmade, totally natural. And then a ferry station will occur going back and forth.”

 

Developers also plan to build two hotels with a combined three hundred and ten rooms. Project economist Hector David Paz says the scale of the investment could create formal jobs, expand the country’s room inventory and generate millions of dollars in visitor spending.

 

Hector David Paz, Economist

“For 2028 we believe that GDP in Belize will be around three point eight billion dollars. This project’s scale will represent, this is just in magnitude, eight percent of GDP with a population of four hundred nineteen thousand people. The point here is that scale matters. We believe that the scale should be around nine hundred forty-six thousand four hundred passengers to two point six passengers. And, with an average spending of eighty seven point forty-two U.S. dollars, the gross tourism spending which would stay in Belize, would fluctuate between eighty-two to eighty-three million dollars, to two hundred and thirty-one million dollars.”

 

But the ambitious projections cannot erase the dispute surrounding the property. Businessman Michael Feinstein continues to challenge the government’s compulsory acquisition of a twenty-three-point-four-acre extension of Stake Bank Island. The project also remains under receivership. When asked whether that litigation threatens the development, Olo Caye President Pierre Dibattisa said his team is focused on building the project and leaving the legal questions to the courts.

 

Pierre Dibattisa, President, Olo Caye

“Unfortunately I am not the right person to answer this question. I am here to develop a project, a very nice project. We do not pay a lot of attention to what is going on legally in the courts, and we trust that the Belizean and the Caribbean justice will make right and decide what is to be done or not. We are here to work together in order for this project to be successful, respecting the law, respecting the mandate that the receivership has. And this important obligation and important mandate is to have this asset to be finally working, producing, employing, producing for the community.”

 

The developers are now courting local tourism stakeholders and potential international partners. But before Olo Caye can deliver on its three-hundred-million-dollar promise, the project must move beyond the legal and financial troubles that stalled Stake Bank. Paul Lopez for News Five.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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