take over the company which was awarded the right to develop the former US Naval Annex suggests the project could finally get off the ground.

Some people will wonder why the scheme designed by Morgan's Harbour Investment Ltd. is being continued with when its backers so signally failed to come through after being awarded exclusive rights to the development.

The other development groups who put forward schemes will doubtless feel that they have been unfairly shut out of the project.

But it should be remembered that MHIL -- whose exclusive rights lapsed when they first failed to secure the necessary financing -- came up with the scheme that best matched the criteria originally set by the Bermuda Land Development Company. The fact that they failed to complete the project does not mean the plans themselves were flawed.

On the contrary, the scheme was very innovative and was probably the best development for the area.

To revert back to an open bidding process -- particularly when a financing group is now prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars over a long time period -- runs the risk of putting the whole development back by years with no guarantee that a new bidder will be any more successful in securing financing and getting the project off the ground than MHIL was.

After seeing a string of hotel developments start with great fanfare and crash and burn later in recent years, it should be clear that Bermuda is not as attractive a place to invest in as we would like to believe.

Those hotels Bermuda has left operate at thin margins and Bermuda is competing for investment money with hundreds of other countries which can offer far lower costs and in some cases, settings which are just as beautiful. With so much uncertainty in many of the world's economies, Bermuda cannot afford to turn down offers of investment on a whim.

The one risk which could continue to hold up the project is the question of evironmental clean-up and the degree to which Government will have to indemnify the developers in the event of environmental difficulty. Given the intransigence of the US government over clean up of the waste oil left at the Annex, Government will have to take care not to open itself up to massive and expensive lawsuits if environmental problems arise.