Jamaica
News - Real Estate - Sales
(April 06, 2005)
Drax Hall sale nears completion
Sale of the 800-acre Drax Hall
property in which Dyoll Group has a stake, has neared completion
to a consortium of businesses with Californian and Jamaican
interests.
Yesterday, Peter Lawson, the
chairman of Dyoll Group, declined to comment on the reported
developments, and so did Ken Tomlinson, the temporary
manager/receiver of Dyoll.
Drax Hall, located about 10
miles from Ocho Rios was slated in the 1990s for a major
development that would have included:
. a luxury 280-room beachfront
hotel, the first hotel on the property;
. a 27-hole golf course;
. a modern 100 slip marina and
marina village offering accommodation, shopping, dining and
recreational facilities;
. 180 villa lots;
. condominium sites and a sports
facility.
The development was to have been
undertaken by Drax Hall Holdings Ltd, Dyoll's partner in the
venture and the owner of the property.
However, with the high interest
rates of the mid-1990s and the collapse of the real estate market,
the planned development never materialised.
Dyoll itself ran into liquidity
problems later in the 1990s, and in 1998 had to use its stake in
Drax Hall to collaterise a $135-million cash injection from
Finsac.
The same property was later used by
Dyoll to secure another Finsac injection, this time by way of
preference shares.
Dyoll later fell out with
Drax Hall Ltd, and in 1999 took the company to court and won an
order in 2002 to recover the principal amount of its investment
with interest accruing from July 1, 1999 to March 15, 2000 at
approximately 33% per annum.
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