That may be so, some critics say, provided it's actually built. The island's two feisty tabloid newspapers have questioned the Malaysian developer's financial resources at a time when his country's economy is seriously faltering. They have suggested that Tan could simply turn around and resell Guiana Island at a fantastic profit.
They also have hammered away at concessions given Tan, especially Prime Minister Lester Bird's promise to remove the Buftons and sell Tan the island for a song.
"My answer to them is simple," Joseph said. "You go anywhere in the Caribbean and you'll see this is a normal pattern. Barbados even built a hotel with its own money and gave it to the Hilton chain to encourage tourism. The options available to these islands are not the best."
Most Caribbean states do grant broad concessions to entice tourism development. But some projects have gone bad in the past. A half-built hotel shell on Dominica, for example, is an enduring reminder of a Taiwanese developer who ran out of cash.
Haydon brushed aside financial concerns about this developer. She said that Johan Holdings Group, the company run by Tan, is a diversified conglomerate with subsidiaries that are traded on the stock exchanges in Singapore, London and the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.
The 50-year-old Tan, a British-educated lawyer, presides over a multibillion-dollar empire involved in manufacturing, real estate, tourism and luxury car distributorships, according to Haydon and Johan Holdings' official annual reports. Haydon asserted that Tan's operations are global, beyond the reach of Southeast Asia's financial crisis. "This is an extremely genuine and well-heeled company," Haydon said.
Local environmentalists, who backed the Buftons' bid to stay on the island, also have opposed the project. They cite an Organization of American States study done in the 1980s recommending that Guiana Island become an official nature preserve. Under that plan, eco-tourists would have visited its rare fallow deer, which would have remained in the Buftons' care.
Resort's Water Needs Raise Red Flag
Many Antiguans also question the vast water requirements of Tan's resort and golf course in a bone-dry nation that relies on a single desalination plant. Even now, the plant's 3.2-million-gallon-a-day supply for the entire country falls short of Antigua's 4-million-gallon demand.
