Pacific Harbour goes ahead

With its hotel opening soon Pacific Harbour goes ahead

The SF2 million Flagship Beach comber Hotel, an anchor pin of the sprawling Pacific Harbour develop ment scheme at Deuba, Fiji, will open for business in September. Offi cial opening will be in November.

Fiji’s latest luxury resort hotel, with 84 rooms, is entirely owned by Pacific Hotels and Developments Ltd., de velopers of the $32 million Deuba scheme, but the hotel management contract has been let to Sky Chefs Inc., catering section of American Airlines, and thus it becomes one of the American Flagship chain. Manager is Jian Tonetto, formerly of Suva’s Trade Winds Hotel.

The developers have been pushing ahead speedily with the Beachcomber (on the site of the tiny hotel with the same name) because once open for business it will provide accommo dation and publicity for the big resi dential development that is now fan ning out behind it at Pacific Harbour.

Pacific Harbour development star ted in 1970, and it is expected to be from 15 to 25 years before the entire 7,500-acre freehold site is fully developed with waterways, homes, shops, yacht club, motels, etc.

But the first stage of 1,120 acres immediately behind the Beachcomber will be completed by next April. The first nine holes of the Robert Trent Jones’ designed golf course will be completed this December. About $5.5 million of the $ll million expenditure on the first stage has already been spent, and more than a half of the 1,250 residential blocks have already been sold (at from $8,500-$8,750 each).

Those sold have been equally dis tributed between buyers in three areas of the world —the South Pacific, in cluding Australia; South-East Asia, in cluding Japan and Taiwan; and the UK and Europe. United States selling has only just started, and about 400 blocks of the first stage have been set aside for the US campaign. All land purchasers have to start building within three years of purchase, to their own plans or to house plans provided by the company. Minimum cost of acquiring land and home at Deuba looks like being about $30,000. Annual rates are extra.

The development company has in corporated a management group to manage and service homes of people who use the project as an investment

and don’t want to live there, or who will live there only part of the year.

The properties will be rated at 1.1 per cent, a year on the land value.

In July there was a workforce of about 700 on the Pacific Harbour development. About 65 per cent, of the expatriate staff are Australian, in cluding the project manager, Tom Brockington, and building manager, Mike Ryan.

With sales for the first stage (one seventh of the entire property) coming along satisfactorily enough, the next question is whether the next phases will continue to attract buyers. Work on the second phase should start about June or July, 1973.

The developers seem confident.

They’ve overcome one line of per sistent local “knocking” by coming up with some official rainfall statistics to prove that the Deuba area (35 miles from Suva) is considerably drier than Suva. The knockers held that the former swamp would be too wet to live in, but the figures show that Suva gets an average 143.87 inches of rain a year, with an average number of 241 wet days a year, compared with Deuba’s 98.57 inches and 136 days. Deuba’s figures are better than those at Sigatoka, another popular hotel area, but not better than the figures at Korolevu and Nadi.

The opening of the prestigious Flagship Beachcomber should give travellers an opportunity to make the comparison for themselves.

Anchor pin of the massive Pacific development scheme at Deuba, 35 miles from Suva is the $2 million Flagship Beach comber Hotel, to be opened for its first guests in September.

Construction is concrete, with main internal walls and ceilings sheathed in local timbers. Bedrooms are on three floors and all have views. Moats and waterways are being developed as landscaping. The hotel faces Beqa Strait with Beqa Island five miles out. Aerial view at left shows the hotel, on the beach in the centre foreground. The Queens Road comes in on the right from Suva and the waterways are spread out behind.

The mouth of the River Qaraniqio, left of the hotel, will be turned into a boat harbour. Most of the residential blocks in the first phase, to be completed early next year, will front onto artificial waterways, which will have sides concreted, and will be fed by the river. More than half the 1,250 residential blocks making up the first stage have already been sold.