This scheme so far confounds the sceptics

From SUE WENDT, In Suva.

In the midst of growing concern over the current land-buying epidemic in the Islands, the men behind the Pacific Harbour resort and residential development in Fiji seem to be doing a fair job of confounding the sceptics. Fiji people who travel regularly along the pot-holed highway between Suva and Nadi, past the Pacific Harbour site at Deuba, still find it hard to envisage a luxurious, leisure-oriented community springing up out of the marsh and jungle.

But even the most dedicated doubters have to admit that things are beginning to move down Deuba way.

Large tracts of land have already been cleared and dredged by Project Development Corporation, the Australian company which last year won a SF6 million contract to prepare the first 1,100 acres for commer cial, hotel and residential development.

By December, the company behind the project, Pacific Hotels and Developments Ltd., had already paid the Fiji Government some $45,000 in port and customs entry tax and duty.

According to managing director, Mr. Ralph Grier son, the company is currently paying out around $4,000 a week in wages to local people. “The wage bill for locals will amount to about $H million over the next three years,” he added.

International tenders have been called for the erection of the first 50 homes, to be built this year.

The contract provides for an additional 50 or more homes to be erected every six months.

The first demonstration house, on a custom-land scaped site fronting the Queen’s Road, is due for com pletion in June. It will contain two air-conditioned bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, a lounge, din

ing and kitchen area, servants’ quar ters, patio, pool area and carport.

The ultimate package for a model home on a i-acre block will be around $A40,000, but prices will vary according to the location of the site.

The company expects to see a well established community of around 300 homes by the end of 1973 —plus at least one, and probably two hotels, a golf course, lake and interlinking canals. The master plan also provides for a 15-acre shopping complex in the first phase of the development.

Work on the first hotel, the 84room Flagship Beachcomber, was due to start in February and a replica of one of the luxurious bedrooms was opened on the site, for visitor inspec tion.

Sales of home sites are progressing well, says managing director Ralph Grierson, who was a partner in a Fiji firm of engineering consultants before joining Pacific Hotels. Since selling started in London last May, some 10 per cent of the blocks have been snapped up, mainly by UK, Fiji and Hong Kong buyers. Nearly half of the sales have been to Fiji residents, he says.

The company now has selling offices in London, Hong Kong and Sydney and agents in New Zealand, Beirut, Zurich and Brussels.

In the plush Pacific Harbour office in Suva, coloured markers decorate a large wall chart of the Deuba de velopment. They indicate the number of sales in January, already $850,000 worth.

Working out at roughly a dollar a square foot, the home sites range from around $7,000 to $30,000, with a special discount for Fiji locals. The most expensive sites, classified as estate lots, are almost exclusively located on a high ridge. They have a water frontage, or back onto the pro posed Robert Trent Jones golf course, due for completion at the end of 1973.

Buyers, says Mr. Grierson, include “four titled Englishmen, a member of the Italian royal family, now living in Liechtenstein, and one of Europe’s best-known playboys.”

First steps towards this vision of a unique leisure-orientated community were taken back in 1963 when three astute young businessmen, Peter Munk, David Gilmour and Pat Samuel, from Canada, formed a com pany to buy the old Beachcomber Hotel at Deuba.

The company now owns 7,500 acres at Deuba, bought for a total cost of $750,000. The land for sale in phase one, including the five hotel sites, the 1,200 residential sites and the commercial and recreation areas, is valued by the company now at $l3 million.

The big British financier and invest ment group, Slater Walker Ltd, ac quired a half-interest in the project in 1969. Last year the P & O shipping company took 11 i per cent, and the Hong Kong financiers Jardine Mathe son 5i per cent. Slater Walker and the founders now have 4li per cent each.

The founders are still very much involved in Pacific Harbour and keep a watchful eye, during frequent visits to Fiji, on progress made. The com pany is sensitive to public opinion and recently took on a full-time PR man whose job will include keeping an eye on local feeling towards the project.

In Fiji in February, fair-haired Peter Munk (sporting a broken leg after a skiing accident in Switzerland) explained that the company’s intention was not to make as many sales as possible in a short time, but to en sure that the project attracted the right kind of buyers.

“We have no intention of selling sites to people who don’t intend to build—hence our mandatory building commitment, which stipulates that a home be built to approved standards within three years,” he said.

Investors will be able to choose one of the model home designs, or select a design or their own. An estate management organisation formed by the developing company will super vise building operations if the owner is not on the site.

“The owners will also be able to rent their homes to holidaymakers, through the same estate management organisation,” said Ralph Grierson.

“The homes will be block-booked to the travel industry—agents, air lines, shipping companies, etc. This will add to the visitor accommodation plant in Fiji and provide the owners with a handsome return on their in vestment.

“The estate management organisa tion will be responsible for rubbish collection, maintenance of roads, canals and lakes, the sewer reticula tion and treatment plant and provi sion of a minimum fire service.

“Cost to the owner of these ser vices will be approximately 1 per cent, of the purchase price per annum.”

Mr Grierson said the project had had nothing but support from the Fiji Government—“evidence of this is the fact that government is putting in the water supply at its cost. We are also coming to an arrangement with the Fiji Electricity Authority.”

Pacific Hotels recently became a major shareholder in Fiji’s domestic airline, Air Pacific (which is expected to change its name, using the word Fiji).