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Stake Bank vs Portico in Supreme Court

GeneralStake Bank vs Portico in Supreme Court

BELIZE CITY, Wed. July 28, 2021– This week, the Supreme Court of Belize granted leave for the principals of Stake Bank (developers of Port Coral) to file an application for judicial review of GoB’s approval of Portico’s Port of Magical Belize development, which is located just 12 miles from the proposed Port Coral Resort and Theme Park.

The issue in question is whether the Government of Belize, by way of the Department of the Environment, acted lawfully in approving the Environmental Impact Assessment and the Compliance Plan related to the Port of Magical Belize project and the potential impact of its operations.

The case will be heard starting September 13, 2021, in the Supreme Court chambers of Justice Lisa Shoman, who granted leave to the Stake Bank principals (the claimants) on Monday.

The Stake Bank project, which has been in the pipeline for a number of years, is an undertaking that will include the development of what the principals call a “world-class” resort and theme park. The site on which the resort and theme park will be located is an island that is just 4 miles southeast of Belize City and 3 miles west of the Drowned Caye Range.

The project also includes a trestle-way for the berthing of four voyager-class cruise vessels, as well as docking for up to 60 smaller vessels, and construction of an 80-room luxury hotel and casino, a market square, and water park, and other amenities.

It is no doubt a mega-investment by the Feinstein group, whose leading principal, Mike Feinstein, has secured funding from local and international sources to see this project come to fruition.

On the other hand, Portico’s Port of Magical Belize (the authorization for which is now in question) is a more recent initiative (established on August 28, 2017) through which a mainland cruise port would be developed near the Sibun River, just 12 miles from Port Coral’s proposed location at Stake Bank.

The port is to be located about 8 miles from Belize City along the coastline and is to be developed by Portico and Royal Boskalis Westminster Contracting Ltd. — Abu Dhabi Brach, who, incidentally, is also an investor in the company and proposed mainland port.

In 2017, when Feinstein signed an investment agreement with the Government of Belize for the construction of the Stake Bank facility, he expressed concerns that there was no guarantee that other entities would not be allowed to enter the sector and provide a similar service, causing Port Coral’s share of the tourism market to be split, and as a result reducing the returns needed to make his investment viable.

Just one month later, in September of 2017, the Government of Belize and Portico Enterprises Limited signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) in which the government indicated its support of the other proposed mainland cruise port.

Since then, another mega port facility, Waterloo’s Cruise Port at the Port of Belize, has been proposed and is reportedly in the works. That facility as well would be targeting the same group of cruise tourists that Stake Banks’s Port Coral, and Portico’s Port of Magical Belize aim to serve.

The case brought by Stake Bank is intended to secure the economic interest of the company by ensuring it gets a feasible share of the market. The company’s legal team, consisting of Senior Counsel Glenn Godfrey and William Lindo, Jr., is arguing that the geographical proximity of the two ports targeting the Belize District would make the projects’ operations economically unsustainable.

As mentioned, the legal proceedings are set to begin on September 13 before Justice Lisa Shoman.

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