The Government of Grand Cayman has now named Verdant Isle Port Partners as the preferred bidder selected to build and maintain the George Town Cruise Berthing Facility, a consortium of four individual companies: McAlpine Ltd, Orion Marine Construction Inc. Carnival Corporation Ltd and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Now that the bidder has been named, the Ministry of Tourism provided details this week as to how much the project will cost and what it will look like.
VIPP were selected as the preferred bidder following a detailed analysis of the bid by the Ministry of Tourism, the Port Authority, PWD’s Major Projects Office and specialist consultants KPMG, Hatch, Royal Haskoning DHV, and Appleby/Pinsent Mason’s who provided technical, financial and legal services during the procurement process.
At a press conference on Monday, Tourism Minister Moses Kirkconnell said it was understandable that the potential impact to the environment had been a cause of concern because Cayman’s natural environment was integral to the viability of the country’s tourism product.
“As a responsible government, we made a commitment from the outset of this project that we would ensure any plan that was approved would be built in a way that minimizes the environmental impact while delivering the greatest benefit to our people and to this country. I believe we have delivered on those commitments,” he said.
Mr. Kirkconnell said the footprint of the new pier design was more environmentally friendly than the 2015 scheme submitted for environmental impact assessment.
“The new design has the piers pushed out into deeper water which means we will need to do less dredging and less coral relocation. There will be no dredging in Hog Sty Bay,” he confirmed.
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The Cayman Island Government has now revealed that the cost of the project, which includes enhancement of the cargo port facility to accommodate higher volumes of cargo, would be less than CI$200 million. The Ministry went on to outline that the project would be carried out under a Design, Build, Finance, Maintain (DBFM) arrangement which would be financed by the preferred bidder.
