Yesterday we took you to Stake Bank island where an enormous cruise port is currently under construction. Port Coral promises to be a completely new experience for tourists who arrive on cruise ships. And the first part of that is - when they arrive- they won't have to get on a tender - they will pull right up to a dock, get off the cruise ship and enter a fully realised tourism island with all the bells and whistles.
Work on the massive 100 plus million Belize dollar project has been going at a record pace since its groundbreaking over two years ago, with hundreds of workers on site, and dozens of cranes, cement trucks, bulldozers and all kinds of heavy equipment at the island off the coast of Belize City.
But while much has been done in a short span towards the goal of opening next year, truth is this project has been years in the making, and we've been reporting on it for well over a decade. And during that time, just like now, there's been plenty of controversy surrounding it. Courtney Menzies took a look back at Port Coral's history, and has this story.
The plan for a major cruise terminal on Stake Bank has around for at least 15 years, and it has been a controversial topic since then. That's because the developer, Mike Feinstein, has envisioned Belize's own 25,000 acre adventure island, complete with three beaches, the largest pool in the country, a zip lining area, and of course, a causeway that connects to Belize City - essentially a road in the middle of the sea.
But in 2007, Stake Bank was a desolate island, having just been cleared of all its mangroves. And Feinstein, who is known to shy away from the spotlight, claimed that he had an agreement with Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.
Fast forward to today and Port Coral says it has expressions of interest, but o written commitments with any cruise line - just Feinstein's belief that once it's there, the ships will flock to it.
But several other things have changed in fourteen years - for one, the project was initially said to be $35 million US dollars. That has increased to $82 million US dollars - 67 of it to be spent here on Stake Bank. And the causeway was first proposed to run from Stake Bank to Belize City - now, it will run from the North Drowned Cayes.
But something that remains are the concerns surrounding it - the first being that it will take business away from other smaller tourism stakeholders.
posted (September 19, 2007)
Jules Vasquez,
"Your critics say that it is in fact insulating all the wealth and economic opportunities associated with it, isolating it on that island and keeping it away from the masses who benefit everyday off of it, or every cruise day."
posted (September 19, 2007)
Mike Feinstein,
"On the contrary, I see it is as the opposite. It will create more jobs and more profit for Belize. If a cruise ship docks at Stake Bank, if you go to a country on a cruise ship, you want to see that country, you don't want to just get off on a little island and say you've been to Belize. You haven't been to Belize, you need to go downtown, you need to see Belize. So its just a wrong perception."
Jules Vasquez,
"So how will these entry level service providers, how will they get their piece of the pie in a scenario where cruise ships are docking at Stake Bank? Explain to me physically how it would work."
Mike Feinstein
"We're doing another tourist village out there. So everything that's here will be out there. We will have duty free shopping, we'll have restaurants, swimming pool, beach activities and vendors, hair braiders - everything has to be done out there as well as in here. So like I said, the opportunity just quadruples in there."
And the second concern is the environmental impacts a project of this magnitude will have. While Feinstein has maintained that there are none, the environmental activists aren't buying it. Especially since the initial proposed causeway sat so close to Swallow Caye, a protected area for endangered manatees, which was fought for by Lionel "Chocolate" Heredia. He spoke up back in 2007.
posted (October 9, 2007)
Lionel 'Chocolate' Heredia
"It mek me feel very very bad Jules because then all my plans and all my ambition to left something after I die, seeing this thing it makes me want to cry because I neva expected one day when I was fighting for Swallow Caye, I never expected one day I will see something like this because our boundary, when we were measuring, it was right there to the point there."
The interest in the project died down for a while but in 2013 talk of Port Coral came back to the forefront, and there was a public consultation where environmentalists raged against the project. And the Manatee Man was there to remind Belizeans of the work put into getting Swallow Caye Reserve - not even long after Chocolate was buried.
posted (June 20, 2013)
Jamal Galvez - Manatee Conservationist
"Swallow Caye reserve has been for Manatees for over the years, it's something that the late 'Chocolate' fought for over the years. To run a cause way through the sanctuary is unbelievable, I'm surprised of such idea - there's no positive that Manatees can actually gain from a causeway going right through in Belize that they can actually call home. The small ways of all the water ways in Belize that these Manatees are residents to it's not like we can tell these Manatees to go on vacation while they're putting a cause way and for them to come back when it is finished."
But the technicians at the Department of the Environment didn't agree; the project got the environmental green light and in 2019 there was an official groundbreaking. And in the two-plus years since, the once empty slate of sand has been transformed into a massive construction site, starting with rebuilding the island itself.
Caleb Wade Project Manager, Port Coral
"It's a bit more than 23 acres but basically we've been trying to recover what once was so we put in thousands of loads of rock, we estimate around 50 million pounds of rocks to prevent further erosion and then use fills from the dredge, dredge spoils as it's called to then raise the level of the island to ten feet above sea level, roughly."
"On land development should be ready middle of next year, the piers should be shortly after that."
"We have quite a large number of food and beverage space, we have over 70 feet of retail rental space, not counting common areas, terminals, bathrooms and that kind of thing. We're gonna have definitely the largest pool anywhere in Belize, salt water aquarium inside of a fresh water pool on the outside. Ziplining from different elements around the island."
"We've catered for over 15,000 people at any one time, understandably a lot of people will be passing through the island and then going on tours into Belize, we still encourage everybody to visit Belize, but we also want to be able to provide somewhere to visit in case they are unable to or don't want to make the trip to mainland."
But the project isn't out of the water yet. While Feinstein insists that there is no major impact, the Coalition of Environmental NGO's has requested the relevant documents for the approval of the causeway and a new round of public consultations on it.
If you want to see what the Minister with responsibility for the environment has to say about the approval for the causeways - tune into Uncut tonight when he will be Jules Vasquez's guest.
