The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

TRIBUNE Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

THE $200M Rosewood Exuma’s developer yesterday hailed what it branded as another legal victory in the battle with neighbouring resorts just one week after asserting it had suffered an “ambush of the worst kind”.

Yntegra Group, the project’s Miami-based developer, hit out at Turtlegrass Resort & Island Club and Yonder Holdings, the two rival projects spearheading the bid to overturn its government approvals, after the Supreme Court rejected their late effort to obtain permission to appeal previous verdicts and halt the substantive trial due to begin on Monday.

A spokesperson for the Rosewood Exuma developer yesterday called on its opponents to drop the preliminary skirmishes and allow their Judicial Review challenge to proceed to a hearing on the main case following Justice Leif Farquharson’s latest ruling delivered on Wednesday, September 23.

“Once again, the court has rejected an attempt to expand or delay these proceedings,” they said. “If the opponents are as confident in their case as they say, they should welcome the chance to present it at next week’s hearing.”

However, Tribune Business understands that Turtlegrass has not yet exhausted all legal avenues to stay Monday’s start of the full Judicial Review hearing, which will decide whether the rival resorts have a valid case for overturning the Rosewood Exuma development’s environmental approvals.

It is thought that attorneys representing the neighbouring Big Sampson Cay developer will appear before the Court of Appeal today in a bid to obtain its permission to launch an appeal of Justice Farquharson’s previous verdicts and stay the trial from proceeding.

Turtlegrass is seeking to overturn Justice Farquharson’s refusal to admit six specialist reports as evidence at the trial, plus make late changes to its case. The judge previously ruled that Turtlegrass was “exceedingly late” in seeking to have the reports admitted, and the proceedings had “already suffered delay arising from previous interlocutory applications”.

The latest legal battle over the proposed development comes just one week after Robert Adams KC, the Delaney Partners attorney representing Yntegra, argued that his client had been subject to “ambush of the worst kind” during the separate hearing before the Subdivision and Development Appeal Board.

That represented Turtlegrass and Yonder Holdings’ bid to challenge, and overturn, the preliminary site plan approval granted to the $200m resort project by the Town Planning Committee. Turtlegrass brought a number of Exuma witnesses, including former employees, to testify and give evidence before the Appeal Board, which reignited controversy over whether Black Point residents thought they were putting their names down for jobs as opposed to signing a petition in support of Rosewood Exuma.

Frederick “Smiley” Ferguson, one of the Exuma residents to appear before the Board in Nassau, made fresh allegations over how Black Point residents came to sign a sheet of paper headlined as ‘I support Sampson Cay’ when they met Yntegra executives on October 5, 2024. He implied that himself and others were duped into signing the document in the belief that they were putting their names forward for jobs at Rosewood Exuma.

“That document, in fact, was put out by Yntegra as being for a job fair — for people who wanted to do masonry, who wanted to do cooking, or whatever, be a cook, or whatever,” Mr Ferguson alleged to the Board.

“And then they turned around and they used that document to say that the people from the Black Point community… they used that same particular document, with DEPP (Department of Environmental Planning and Protection), the environmental impact assessment, to say that the people in Black Point and Staniel Cay actually supported them.”

The controversy first erupted when the papers containing the 76 names were attached to the Rosewood Exuma environmental impact assessment (EIA) as evidence purporting to show local residents were in favour of the development. Headlined ‘I support Sampson Cay’, it also ended with the words: “On behalf of Black Point, Exumas, we would like for Felipe MacLean Sampson Cay/Rosewood to continue. We have all agreed.”

But, while the words support Yntegra’s argument that Black Point residents signed a petition in support of the project willingly, sources close to Turtlegrass are alleging that both the headline and concluding phrases were added after the local community had put their names down.

However, Kendal Black, deputy chief councillor for Exuma’s Black Point district, reassured DEPP in a subsequent letter that Black Point was in “enthusiastic support” of the $200m Rosewood Exuma development.

“Over the years, Yntegra has shown a genuine commitment to our community and we believe that their project will benefit the people of Black Point,” he wrote. “Mr MacLean told us that the hotel will create jobs, starting from hiring carpenters and heavy machine operators to captains for charters and supporting local businesses in Black Point.

“We do not benefit from most of the other developments. We need quality jobs and we trust that this project will make those jobs…. Please, our people are crying out for something positive in Black Point. We would be most grateful for a favourable response from DEPP so that this project can move ahead in short order.”

Mr Ferguson, though, told the Appeal Board hearing that Mr Black should not have signed the letter by himself and that it needed to come from three local government councillors. “To compound it, they had one representative from local government sign the document. That doesn't happen sir. You need all three of them to sign,” he alleged.

Mr Ferguson agreed with suggestions by Fred Smith KC, the Callenders & Co lead attorney for Turtlegrass, that Black Point residents had been “misled” over the document they signed and what it was for. But Mr Smith’s attempt to obtain Mr Ferguson’s thoughts on the $500m Cave Cay project, another development in the Exumas for which Yntegra obtained a Heads of Agreement, but was taken over by another developer, prompted intervention by Mr Adams.

The Delaney Partners challenged the “relevance” of Cave Cay to a planning hearing on another project, prompting Mr Smith to counter that it raised questions over Yntegra’s capacity to develop Rosewood Exuma.

“Well, the relevance is your clients purport to be developers. They had a $500m intended development of Cave Point [Cay]. They never got off the ground. And now they've got a new promise to develop another place,” Mr Smith argued.

Mr Adams hit back, asserting: “I’m putting on record a formal objection as to relevance as to this testimony. It has absolutely nothing to do with the decision made by the Town Planning Committee to grant preliminary support to this application in relation to Sampson Cay. Cave Cay, Sampson Cay, two different locations.  I therefore formally object to this kind of information being provided to the board on the ground of lack of relevance.”

Mr Smith, though, persisted, arguing: “This was raised at the Town Planning Committee meeting, as to whether or not the Town Planning Committee should approve a purported developer who had not developed something else before….

“The relevance of it is whether or not Yntegra is a developer that is capable of doing any of the things that they promised to do in their Heads of Agreement…. We have maintained that Yntegra is not a developer that is capable of developing Sampson Cay, because they did not develop Cave Cay

This led Dr Roosevelt Whyms, the Appeal Board chair, to agree with Mr Adams that “that’s not the case before us”. He was backed by fellow Board director Stephen Melvin, a Higgs & Johnson attorney, who agreed that a developer’s financial viability was something vetted by the National Economic Council (NEC) and central government, not the Town Planning Committee.

But Mr Smith again countered: “This is the big mistake that I think everybody is suffering from. The NEC is one entity; it does what it does. The Town Planning Committee has responsibilities under the PSA (Planning and Subdivision Act).

“Part of the responsibility is to decide.. in fact, a person intending to do a development, to get a CEC (certificate of environmental clearance), is supposed to put up a bond. They have yet to put up a bond, and yet they've got all these approvals. So Cave Cay is relevant . The capacity of Yntegra to develop is relevant, or not, as to whether they can or can't develop.”

Mr Ferguson gave somewhat contradictory evidence before the Appeal Board, first saying he “had no problems with the Yntegra project” but it was “too large”. Then, later, he argued that it had caused a “rift” in Black Point between those in favour and opposing it.

And, finally, under questioning from Edward Fitzgerald KC, the Government’s UK attorney, Mr Ferguson conceded that it was only the dredging - which Yntegra has pledged will be confined to small area by its service dock - that he and other members of the community oppose.

“Yeah, some people are for Yntegra, even if they're not for the dredging. What it is, is that the community of Black Point actually wants both projects. We want both projects to go on. We don't want the dredging. We want the best of both worlds,” he revealed. “It's the dredging. And we don't like the bickering between the two parties, because like they'd say on Black Point, we don't get into no argument with two rich boys.”

Mr Adams, though, renewed his objections over the lack of advance notice given on Turtlegrass’s witnesses and their evidence. “Mr Ferguson's name as a witness to be called on behalf of the appellant was only notified to us this morning,” he asserted. “We did not have a preview of his evidence, despite the fact that we yesterday asked for it to be provided by the appellant.

“We maintain, similarly, the objection that Mr Ferguson's evidence, if it's to be received, it would be unfair to the second respondents. This is ambush of the worst kind, ambush of the worst kind, and the appellants know better.”