Guardsman: We pay $3m lease for Puerto Seco Beach
THE GUARDSMAN Group has said that the $13,000 it pays annually to the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) as a licensing fee to operate the Puerto Seco Beach in Discovery Bay, St Ann, should not be confused with the lease of just under $3 million that it has with the Jamaica Bauxite Mining Limited.
The disclosure was made in response to an assertion by Professor Carolyn Cooper in a Sunday Gleaner column published on August 5, 2018. She noted, “In response to my query to NEPA about the cost of the lease for Puerto Seco Beach, I was sent copies of the permit and licences. There in the ‘Third Schedule’ was the answer to my question: $13,000 a year to lease the beach!”
Laura Heron, general manager of Guardsman Hospitality, told The Gleaner yesterday, “Our lease amount to Jamaica Bauxite is close to $3 million a year; that’s what we are paying.”
She added, “... I assume the amount provided to Miss Cooper from NEPA is actually a fee that is paid as a beach licensing fee on an annual basis ... . In fact, I don’t believe that NEPA would be privy to the amount of our lease.”
According to Coy Roache, managing director of the Jamaica Bauxite Mining Limited, the lease with The Guardsman Group started on January 29, 2016, and runs for 25 years with periodic increases built into the agreement.
He noted, “We have a basic fee for the first three years ... then we have a percentage of the value of the property in US dollars, which makes it after three years, at today’s rate, go up to about $7 million a year.”
However, Roache pointed
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