Eden Island in the International News:
THE CELEBRATED, barefoot-luxury hideaway of North Island, Seychelles, opened in 2003 as a ‘Noah’s Ark, with an agenda to save endangered native species in the tropical archipelago. Now Seychelles has a new resort development which also make a biblical allusion. But Eden Island, funded by a South African investment company, exists merely to sell property to affluent holiday-home investors.
This Eden is a man-made creation: it is an artificial, 42-hectare island made of material dredged up from the ocean floor. A 300-metre bridge connects it with the main road between the capital, Victoria, and the international airport. The island will be home to a five-star hotel and 480 freehold residential properties, many of which will be available for holiday rental. One-bedroom apartments, with their own mooring, are for sale from US$295,000.
Seventy ‘Creole-style’ villas will cost between US$1.5 and US$2.5 million to buy, and are expected to be offered for rent at about US$2,000 a night. The first properties should be ready for occupation by mid-2007. The whole project, with accommodation for about 2,000 people, a 5,000-square- metre shopping area, underground parking, five beaches and a marina capable of handling super-yachts up to 80 metres long, is due to be completed be 2012.
Property sales should realise about US$400 million, of which 17.5 per cent will go to the Seychelles government. In financial terms this is the country’s most significant development, according to the International Monetary Fund; and it is expected to create at least 300 jobs.
The projects sales director, Gail Gavrill, says that unlike Dubai’s Palm Island – also built from the seabed up – Eden Island is designed to appeal to people with an interest in the natural environment. ‘If you’re into Versace and Gucci, it’s not for you,’ she says. ‘You have to be into diving and nature.’ By the end of last year, 40 of the villas had already been reserved.
But Eden Island has its local critics. The land reclamation, carried out by the government several years ago, is a target for environmentalist Nirmal Shah, director of Nature Seychelles. ‘It’s like a big parking lot built on marine ecosystems,’ he says. ‘Coral reefs, seagrass beds… they’ve all been killed.’ While he concedes that it is better to reclaim land from the sea than to develop inland, he says the procedure for environmental-impact assessments is ‘not transparent enough’. He argues that the island is ‘a huge strain on the country’s infrastructure’. The project has also generated political debate. Naturally, the chief executive of the Seychelles Tourism Board, Maurice Lousteau-Lalanne, says that Eden Island ‘will have a very positive impact’. Visitor arrivals should reach 145,000 in 2006, and Lousteau-Lalanne hopes that the island ‘will attract an additional 20,000 visitors a year’.
(Traveller Magazine)
