Citizen Grenada Citizen Grenada | Page 42

Hideaway True Blue Hideaway True Blue “ They managed to build 48 condominiums in an incredible time frame of only 11 months...an amazing achievement! “ from students wanting to rent from us. “ Richard Nixon and his Hideaway True Blue development remains the only local natural born developer in the entire Caribbean region of CBI jurisdictions, that has completed a CBI Real Estate project in their own country “We are very competitive based on what we provide. Every room has a view, air-conditioning, fine furnishings and appliances Flat screen TV’s Internet and highest quality finishings. STUDIO SUITE Rental prices range from $1450usd for a studio suite. And go up from there. Hideaway True Blue has a selection from Studios, One and Two bedroom suites available. ONE BEDROOM TYPE-B An area that Nixon seems to have excelled in has been the construction phase. The project turned sod at the end of January 2018 and Nixon is glad to announce he accepted his first tenants November 1st 2018 and from January 2019 he expects full occupancy of every apartment. They managed to build 48 condominiums in an incredible time frame of only 11 months…an amazing achievement! “ WHATS THE SECRET? ONE BEDROOM TYPE-C Nixon claims “You have to be here to drive the process. The Contractor being Chinese and the Chinese workers have a different work ethic to local labor practices but we have been delighted to see the local labour force embrace many of their methods skill sets and work habits. Part of my dream was to see Grenadians raise the bar and improve their efficiency and productivity. There has been a transfer of knowledge expertise and work ethic between the Chinese and the Grenadians and this is of great benefit to our local workforce. "60-70% of the workforce was Grenadian and at peak we had about 70 workers on this site. I insisted that for every foreign worker we had working on this site we had at least 2 local workers. Its my way of giving back to the benefit of our people. Now we find some of our local lads even speaking some Chinese too…It may be words and phrases we can’t print in this magazine but they are definitely learning from each other". “In the area of finishings we have had some challenges but me being here has helped tremendously as I know what I want and the level of quality that must be maintained. We’ve done some benchmarking and if we were to use a local contractor instead of the Chinese contractor then we are looking at a 30-40% delta. DR. RICHARD NIXON MANAGING DIRECTOR OF HIDEAWAY TRUE BLUE “We negotiated a fixed price contract for this project, with the Chinese contractor tied to certain performance timelines but this is not the preferred model with local contractors. So a building like this would typically take around 2 years to build using local contractors so finishing it within a year I am now able to gain one year of revenue that obviously has to be factored in to the end price. PHOTO BY TONY MCQUILKIN 42 Citizen Grenada TWO BEDROOMS Citizen Grenada 43 43