by Brian Major
Last updated: 1:34 PM ET, Mon October 12, 2015
Photo via Wikimapia
A long-shuttered Jamaica hotel has found a buyer. Hotelier Christopher Issa will purchase the former Breezes Montego Bay hotel for $7.8 million, according to a Jamaica Gleaner report citing "well-placed sources." The sale price is just over one-half of the property's last reported valuation of $14.3 million, the report notes.
The sale was confirmed Monday by Zein Issa Nakash, vice president of marketing and environmental affairs at SuperClubs, parent company of Breezes. With the purchase, Christopher Issa will acquire a property that his family's company previously operated.
Co-owned by the Jamaica government's National Insurance Fund and NCB Staff Pension Fund - a subsidiary of its builder, NCB Investments - the hotel was managed by SuperClubs until its September 2009 closure. The 124-room hotel had been built in 1995.
Issa had previously negotiated to buy the beachfront property in 2012, but an agreement was not reached. At the time, the cost of refurbishing the property was cited as a challenge to any potential operator.
"The asking price and the cost of renovation are always going to be challenging points of negotiation, regardless of who makes the offer," Audrey Deer-Williams, the National Insurance Fund's (NIF) senior director of investments, told the Gleaner earlier this year.
Issa, who also owns the Spanish Court Hotel in Kingston, is now "putting together the designs for a renovation" of the property, the Gleaner report states.
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