For years, promises have been made by successive administrations to redevelop the property, but successive administrations have cited several problems encountered in trying to restore the hotel to its former glory.

The last reported update was given around January 2022 by former Premier Andrew Fahie, who stated that progress was stalled due to some legal concerns.

“That statement is also an inaccurate statement,” said O’Neal in a recent interview with 284 Media. “There are no legal entanglements on Prospect Reef property per se. The first chairman of the Prospect Reef board was Robert Mactavious… He gave me specific instructions. He said ‘look, until we know what the government wants to do, we have to keep Prospect Reef in a non-committal state’. I think the legal term is vacant possession,” O’Neal explained.

He continued: “We did not issue any contracts or leases that someone could basically hold or bind the property onto. That may be one of the legal entanglements but nothing like that exists,” O’Neal explained.

He also rebuffed claims that there were legal entanglements at the resort because the former operators sold timeshare vacations to tourists who had legal rights to visit the property.

According to O’Neal, the delay in developing Prospect Reef has to do with the government’s inability to decide what they want to do with the property. While they’re doing that, he said the government needs to pay monies that he and three other employees of Prospect Reef are owed.

“There is this situation concerning myself and three other men. It ain’t a lot of money but we need to be settled. I have not been paid for over four years. September of this year will be five years. Me and my men have not been settled at all. Government has not had any communication with us,” O’Neal explained