Royal Mill, the five-star twelve-storey Luxury resort
On January 24, 2020, Prime Minister Gonsalves and Alex Lodde of A&A Capital turned sod to mark the official start of Royal Mill, the five-star twelve-storey Luxury resort—and residence and penthouse and apartment units—project at Ratho Mill. (I cannot remember who turned sod for Ames.) At the time, A&A claimed the end of 2020 was the anticipated delivery date. A twelve-storey building to be completed in eleven months? Like if they are in China. By his public action, Ralph was not just turning sod, he was also selling us the package having done, I suppose, his due diligence beforehand. Yeah. Riiight.
I do not know when the date was updated; but it was. Now, it is “by the end of 2022.” Well, I got news for Royal Mill fans: Ralph, boy, keep an eye on the A&A website, we—and you—ain’t start to see update delivery date yet. Unless they don’t give we no more … at all. And that is powerful advice.
What is happening with Royal Mill is not dissimilar to the way government approaches potholes and derelict vehicles. When a pothole appears in our roads, nothing happens, nothing is done in the way of repairs … until. Ah, “until.” “Until” is a government prerequisite necessary before fixing.
Potholes are left to become much large enough, and much numerous enough until it breaks public tolerance. Then the fixing starts. Derelict vehicles are left to become a public nuisance and rat lodgings before the clean up takes place.
Royal Mill should cause a nervy feeling of déjà vu and given that it is in Camillo’s backyard and that he passes it twice a day, and assuming that he reports the sluggish pace of construction to daddy, the project must, no, should keep them awake at night. I can hear them mulling: Ello, this thing is like a Buccament redux and is like death by a thousand cuts.
Ralph’s—and his government by extension—sweaty desperate ambition for hotel investment is leading him by the short and curly. Ride in on your white horse with a hotel investor tag and they prostrate themselves. Be sure, if we build it for you, you are not an investor. “Investor” in that case would be a generosity that is not merited.
Fresh from his years-long harrowing experience of cleaning up Ames’s mess, there he is merrily digging hole for Lodde. Before he had the shovel in the ground, A&A had already published the Royal Mill brochure. Have you seen it? It is a study in craft and deception. If Ralph had not seen it, then he sleeping, so shame on him. But my money say he did, sure. Man, is like everything A&A write in that piece of grift is a lie, even “and” and “the.”
The snail-paced constriction is going to drag on and on and on until—the fated “until”— it drags on long enough for Ralph and company to make them take a serious run at it.
The brochure is optic fraud and should be illegal. It likely is. I am no lawyer though, so “likely” will have to suffice. Alas, our ostriches want hotel, so illegal is legal. If the government had homed in, from early o’clock, as they should have, on the unimplied lies and implied lies, the falsehoods, the innuendos, the con in pictures, a body more careful would have been doing Ralph’s digging. If at all.
Royal Mill Luxury Resort and Hotel sits on the hill above Calliaqua. In the brochure, it is dead—which by rights should kill it—in the Tobago Cays—or so you are led to believe—with a panoramic view not even Santorini can best.
A derelict is a disused and neglected possession, usually in poor condition. But that is not necessarily binding. Royal Mill is going to prove me right. The way I see it, the luxury resort will go straight to dereliction without the usual interval of existence.
If the twelve-storey project makes delivery, then I would be wrong. But I wouldn’t know because I’d be dead. Still, how long do you think it would take a tourist, “who know and appreciate the very best,” yes, it is in the brochure, upon arriving at “his’ luxury resort, sans the panorama and idyllic beaches that he saw in the ad, which is somewhat unlike what he is seeing in Calliaqua, to realize: Uh, oh, this is not what I paid for. I’ve been swindled. Swindled in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. You can tell that Lodde has scant regard for Tripadvisor and social media. Woe be unto him—and regrettably, other unwitting hoteliers—for that miscalculation.
If I am wrong, it would be a short-lived wrong. I can live with that. “Live,” what? According to me I’d be done dead. So short-lived is a matter for Lodde and Ralph, who will have to jump start derelict negotiations. All over.
On the bright side, Comrade has experience in underelicting a thing. On the dark side, this one is going to stretch him out good, if only because while Royal Mill is “sitting on elevated oceanfront property,” an allusion—I could have used “delusion,” it would have been righter— that don’t translate to beach, Buccament sits, plumb, on a beach. The brochure writer don’t know all hotels in tiny, mountainous St. Vincent sit on elevated oceanfront property. It is just that some are farther from the oceanfront and have less view. View? They are not talking view, though. They do not dare. From a view perspective, they are selling an exact counterfeit. I pity the poor unsuspecting tourist who would not be getting what he has been sold.
