Approve this special development order or the investors may pull out, threatened Chris Maybury at a meeting of concerned citizens on April 24. Put simply, he is saying, “Give us what we want or else”.

What they want are hundreds of units — tourism and residential — to support a hotel that, according to them, is not profitable without this extra development. If they cannot make money from the Fairmont Southampton, why did they buy it? What does this say about their commitment to the hotel and what will this mean for Bermuda in the longer term?

The Bermuda Environmental Sustainability Taskforce wants to see the Fairmont Southampton hotel reopen and we expected that to have happened by now because, in September 2020, Gencom said the hotel was closing to undergo a complete renovation. Other hotels did and reopened after the pandemic.

Instead, Gencom is holding this iconic hotel to ransom. If we don’t allow it to build the 261 units, the resort may become, said Mr Maybury, “another derelict hotel on the landscape”.

Gencom wants us to believe that the additional residential development is vital for Bermuda’s future economic success, but we question the accuracy of this. In particular, the claims being made in the documents provided in support of the Fairmont Southampton SDO application.

For example, the main source of underlying data in the economic impact assessment is unaudited data provided by Westend Properties, along with other local statistics that may or may not be valid for this property. We also question the utility of a document that is based on so many assumptions.

The word “assume”, and derivations thereof, appears in the economic documents more than 120 times, including PwC writing in its economic assessment: “PwC assumes the data provided is accurate and complete.” And “PWC has not audited, validated or independently verified any information or data provided or any assumptions made”.

Its wider economic impact assessment states: “…the data we have been provided is limited and based on a set of assumptions as the project is at the beginning of a 20-year development plan. Readers should therefore expect the ultimate outcome to vary to those set out in this plan. As such, there is uncertainty around our estimates provided in this report.”

Wouldn’t including audited data from the Tucker’s Point property, which is also owned by Gencom, add more credibility to the data?

Like the development drawings, we cannot rely upon these economic assessments to make an informed decision about the SDO.

What we do agree on, however, is that in the space of 20 years, a lot will change. Wouldn’t it make more sense, therefore, for SDOs to be structured to deliver on a shorter timeline, such as within ten years? If that were the case, the 2009 SDO would already have been acted upon and we might already have an operational hotel. Instead, it simply increased the value of the property for the previous owners.

We also have questions about the claim that 600 construction jobs will be created by this development, while the economic analysis says 100 jobs per year. Where will all these extra construction workers come from? Given how active Bermuda’s construction industry is at the moment, we expect many will have to come from overseas. How many meaningful jobs will therefore be created for Bermudians and how much of this income will reach the Bermudian economy?

The documents do not support the idea that the six-storey high residences provide positive economic or social benefit to our island. The economic assessments include nothing about the economic or social costs this development would impose on us, only the monetary benefits. How will the additional guest workers and residents affect our roads, schools or our overcrowded hospital? These documents are equivalent to a financial plan that shows only revenues.

If the tax incentives given to Gencom set a precedent, what is the tax cost on future developments that will expect the same concessions? How much will our tourism appeal suffer because of overdevelopment? How will all this construction and overdevelopment affect Bermudians’ quality of life? And what will be the environmental cost of lost green space and increased population density?

Gencom and Westend Properties argue that they need to develop the extra tourism and residential units to make the hotel profitable. If they are unable to make the Fairmont Southampton hotel profitable, we question their real reason for buying it. It looks more like a real estate transaction and we suspect that, once it is complete, they will leave us to deal with any long-term consequences.

• Kim Smith is the executive director of the Bermuda Environmental Sustainability Taskforce