Billionaires Battle Over a Hotel and Quality of Life on St. Barts

The Dupré corporations began the initiatives because the island was coping with new issues about sustainability. A 2016 Wildlife Conservation Society report acknowledged that the island’s setting is “quickly degrading” due to land-based air pollution draining into the ocean and destroying marine habitats, urbanization and overfishing. A 12 months later, Hurricane Irma devastated the island, worsening an already dire housing scarcity for employees.

That stress might clarify a few of the animosity towards Ms. Dupré and her husband, Mark Nunnelly (a former managing companion at Bain Capital, former chief government of Domino’s Pizza and an investor in an outsourcing concern, a name heart and different ventures). Somebody scrawled “Get Out Dupré Pig” in crimson on the white development wall — a extremely uncommon act of vandalism on the principally crime-free island. One of many English-language island on-line boards has a chat titled “Loss of life to Domino’s Pizza” in reference to the resort mission.

“In a single nook you have got this billionaire enterprise agency and within the different a bunch of native folks saying please don’t harm our marine life,” mentioned a Youngstown, Ohio, legal professional, Eddie Czopur, who has been staying on St. Jean Bay throughout the winter season for years. “It was like a ‘Rocky’ story, that the locals received.”

However Ms. Dupré and Mr. Nunnelly are hardly the one superrich who’ve been accused of constructing plans that appear to disregard island scale or Caribbean aesthetic. Islanders have watched as tycoons have more and more competed to see who can anchor the most important yacht within the harbor, or construct the most important villa.

The native authorities just lately restricted the scale of recent villas to below 150 sq. meters (just a little over 1,600 sq. ft). However at the very least 50 beforehand issued development permits are nonetheless within the pipeline — which means new mega mansions will certainly be erected. The once- crystalline waters across the island have turned cloudy as construction-runoff sediment damages reefs and drives off sea animals. One marine biologist who works on the island informed me she cried after returning to a diving website as soon as teeming with turtles and sharks and discovering it barren.

Ms. Dupré and her husband declined to remark for this text, referring inquiries to Mr. Stanton, a spokesman for Ms. Dupré and her firm, SAS St. Jean Seaside Actual Property. He mentioned the corporate will enchantment the ruling in opposition to the L’Etoile allow to a better courtroom in France in March, however that adjudication will take at the very least 15 months. Ms. Dupré nonetheless hopes to construct a resort, however will fill within the gap as ordered as soon as the collectivité grants permission, he mentioned.

“She has a deep background in resort administration, and Denise and the household have had a particular affection for the island for greater than 20 years,” Mr. Stanton mentioned. “She and the St. Barts crew she labored with really feel they have been very attentive to bringing a peaceable, stunning factor to this seaside, and can proceed to have interaction in constructive dialogue with the group concerning the mission.”