A prolonged planning process for the Park Hyatt Resort has caused the project to lose a portion of its financing.However the project is still moving forward, according to E Michael Jones, local representative for developer Carl Bazarian.Construction should have been completed within 48 months after the site was cleared in 2008 — ground has yet to be broken.Mr Jones insisted yesterday that developers are in talks with Government to extend that deadline, and the bulk of financing remains in place.“Because planning has taken so long, some people on the financing side have moved on, but Mr Bazarian is still working very hard to finish the last tiny details of what has to be done,” Mr Jones said.“At this point we are just looking for the last couple of dollars. The vast majority of the $294 million is still in place.“We know that this has taken an extensively long time, but we hope the St George’s community will support us with this venture.”First announced in 2007, the $294 million hotel project was said to include 100 rooms and suites on the site of the former Club Med hotel, along with 140 condos and 40 fractional units.The project was originally expected to be completed by spring of 2011.In January of 2010, Mr Bazarian announced that financing for the project was in place, and that he hoped work on the site would begin by the end of the year.Mr Jones said yesterday: “The lease calls for work to be completed there within a certain time frame, but the reality is that it can take a long time to get through planning. Keep in mind that there is not an SDO for this development.”He noted that members of the community had objected to some aspects of the plan, and that work to address the issues had led to the planning process taking longer than anticipated.“There are some things the community have expressed concerns about but we are still trying to work towards to see if the changes can be fit into the plans,” he said.Mr Jones said he understood that some people would not believe the project was moving forward until ground is broken, but he asked for the community to continue to support the effort to bring a new hotel to the town.“There are any number of hotel projects in Bermuda that are on the cards. This project is much further along than any other project,” Mr Jones said.“It’s taken a long time. We started this in 2007. It’s now 2012. It’s taken a long time to get where we are.“I can see, and Mr Bazarian can understand, that some people will not believe it until they see it. In the meantime, I believe any support given to the project will be helpful.”Asked when the project would finally break ground, Mr Jones said they hoped work would begin on the site “soon”.Meanwhile, he said St George’s Golf Course was officially returned to the developer on June 30 and work has now begun to improve its condition.“The work on the grass was started this weekend. As many in the community know, we made the golf course available through the Chamber of Commerce and the St George’s Club for $1 a year,” he said.“We were convinced that it would be a good thing for the St George’s community. It didn’t work out as well as we had hoped, but we are now trying to return the course to a better condition.”