The St Ann Parish Council has accused the RIU Group of defying a stop order on the construction of a new hotel the Spanish firm is building in Mammee Bay, St Ann, and suggested that the matter could be settled in court.

According to St Ann’s Bay mayor, Delroy Giscombe, RIU was given permission to clear the site and dump it with marl, but was not given permission to start construction of the US$45-million RIU 3 hotel.

However, a spokesman for the contractors denied that any construction work that contravenes the parish council’s instructions was taking place on the site.

Mayor Giscombe, though, insisted that the company had proceeded to cut down trees and had, in fact, started concrete and steel work on the site.

That, Giscombe said, pushed the council’s director of planning and the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) to serve the stop order on the hotel construction last Monday.

According to the mayor, construction on the hotel continued during the course of last week and the council might be forced to go through the courts to have RIU comply with the stop order.

“Although the NEPA person has served them the stop notice and the enforcement notice, they are still going ahead, so we might have to meet with them and if they don’t heed we might have to take out an injunction through the courts,” Giscombe told the Observer Friday afternoon.

The mayor had earlier in the day met with representatives from NEPA, the fire department, National Works Agency (NWA), the police and health department to discuss the issue.

Coming out of that meeting, it was decided to seek a meeting with the RIU management early this week where an attempt would be made to have the matter settled.

Controversy is nothing new to RIU which already operates two hotels in Negril – one with 392 rooms and the other with 450 rooms.

In February 2002, the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association complained that the budget rates charged by RIU could impact negatively on the smaller properties that account for the majority of hotels in Negril.

In March this year, in a letter to the editor of this newspaper, a resident of St Ann charged that RIU 3’s construction would impact negatively on Mammee Bay and its surrounding communities.

The 600-room hotel slated for Mammee Bay is part of a huge wave of Spanish investment that has poured into Jamaica since last year.

In June 2003, Grupo Pinero signed a sale agreement with Tankweld for the purchase of a 200-acre property in St Ann to build three 600-room hotels, a move described at the time by Development Minister Dr Paul Robertson as “the largest single hotel development in Jamaica’s history”.

Each property is expected to cost between US$60 million and US$100 million.

Two other Spanish hotel chains – Barcelo Hotels and Resorts and Grupo Iberostar Hotels and Resorts – are to build 850-room hotels in St Ann and St James respectively.

Earlier this year, A&H Investments acquired 200 acres of beachfront property in Trelawny which Observer sources said at the time would be used to construct a hotel.