ROBINS Bay, a curvaceous piece of land that dips its skirts into the sea on the northern shores of St Mary, is like a woman being hotly pursued by more suitors than she can handle.

On the one hand are the locals, mostly nature-loving Rastafarians and their families, who have farmed the land for decades and have made a living by offering tour-guide services to visitors.

On the other there is a developer who has expressed an interest in bringing luxurious accommodations to the sleepy bay, with features that local residents say will spoil their way of life and rob them of their means of earning a living.

Several residents have in fact been served eviction notices and have hired local lawyer Antoinette Haughton-Cardenas to serve a claim of adverse possession on their behalf.

They are also seeking money from international environmental interests to develop an eco-tourism industry in the community, in an effort to block the British-based developer, Losville Bevett of Los Villeage Resort. Funds to the tune of US$40 million, they say, will provide them with the means to buy local land and block efforts to develop the envisaged four-star resort property and water park in their community.

In the meantime, Bevett is advertising his Robins Bay, Los Villeage resort, which is proposed to feature “120 new rooms, two spectacular penthouse restaurants on an eight storey complex set in five acres of secluded coastline”.

The resort is described on the website www.losvilleage.com as “a fusion of glass and steel. Los Villeage Casino Resort will become St Mary’s only full-service resort offering casino with all the amenities of a modern, upscale resort, and home to the most stylishly decorated, eco friendly rooms in the region and 270 degree panoramic views over Robins Bay.” The property is set to be located, “just eight minutes from Boscobel (Ocho Rios) Aerodrome, 15 minutes from Ocho Rios”.

However, research has shown that no approval for construction plans has been sought from the St Mary Parish Council, and no permits or environmental impact studies for the multimillion dollar, five acre project have been completed.

According to Zadie Neufville of the National Environment Planning Agency (NEPA) in Kingston, NEPA has not received an application from Los Villeage.

“.the agency is making every effort to inform the persons mentioned on the website, that environmental permits and/or licenses will be required for this development,” Neufville said, while noting that construction had not started yet.

Meanwhile, the parish council is concerned that the residents of Robins Bay may find themselves in a race against time.

“It’s first come, first serve,” says Councillor Eyon Palmer, from the parish council. “The residents do not want the high rise development, but the parish council is looking for business and any development that comes to the area will be good.”

But friends and residents of the community are putting things in place to forward the agenda of the community.

One such friend is Dan Glazer, retired Attorney-at-Law from Los Angeles, California and frequent visitor to Robins Bay. He has hired local Attorney-at-Law, Antoinette Haughton-Cardenas on the resident’s behalf and has also launched the website www.abrahamia.com, in protest.

“Robins Bay is an ecological treasure,” he says. “It is the only place in Jamaica where there are large areas of undisturbed rain forest, miles of pristine coastline with living coral.”

For the residents of Robin Bay, the issue is not only an environmental one. The construction of the resort would see changes to a way of life, which is nearly a century old, they say.

Fats, an aging farmer who claims to have lived in Robins Bay from before he was eight years old, says that Robins Bay was the squatter community which for many decades provided labour for the Sheerness and Greenacres estates.

“A lot of them (squatters) parents died looking after the land. The people who are here so long should get first preference for a house spot. That is where I see justice,” the farmer said.

His neighbour, thirty one year old Aston Blackstone, a tour guide and scuba diver who received an eviction notice in April 2005, adds, “the whole community live off the land.”

The legal action of Robins Bay residents began in April 2005 when eight of them were served with eviction notices.

Residents, many of whom claim to have resided in the area for over two decades, argue that they had the right to remain and also to participate and benefit from any new development in the area.

Antoinette Haughton-Cardenas, legal representative of the eight people given eviction notices, states that people who have lived on the property for a very long time have “a very good case of adverse possession. If you live on land for thirteen years or more, openly, then you can apply for title for land. Our clients are in that position”.

“We have filed a claim, declaring that these people are the owners of the pieces they have lived on and farmed,” the attorney says. While her office has experienced some difficulty in locating the proprietors listed on the title, the attorney says that help had been recently obtained in serving the claim.

Meanwhile, Operator of Sonrise Beach Retreat in Robins Bay, Kim Chase, says she is in e-mail contact with the Los Villeage’s developer in the UK She says the owner is willing to meet with residents to hammer out a compromise.

– Panos Institute (Caribbean)