News
Ritz Carlton developers are new owners of controversial Dellis Cay in “record breaking” sale by Engel and Völkers Turks and Caicos
By Deandrea Hamilton & Dana Malcolm
Editorial Staff
#TurksandCaicos, July 5, 2022 – Desarrollos Hotelco, owners and developers of the Ritz Carlton Turks and Caicos are the new owners of the entirety of Dellis Cay. All 560 acres of prime real estate was sold in a deal brokered by Engel and Völkers between Desarrollos and The Trinidad and Tobago Unit Trust Cooperation. Philip Misick, veteran realtor and brother of former Premier Micheal Misick, represented the sellers of the property.
While the sale price was not announced, a single unfinished home on the island had been previously listed for a whopping $3.7 million US dollars. Engel and Völkers describes the sale as “record breaking.”
But a promise from businessman Dr. Cem Kinay still lurks in the background. As the visionaire and former developer for Dellis Cay, Kinay has unapologetically emphasized his plans to sue to keep the land he claims is his own.
Dellis Cay was sold to Kinay, a Turkish hotelier in 2005 by a private owner for $18 million and he started a luxury project with Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group. The first phase should have been completed in 2009 but that would not happen; it was unequivocally interrupted by the scandalous Commission of Inquiry (of the same year) into the
His vision for Dellis Cay struck such sensational chords, it attracted the likes of mega stars like Catherine Zeta Jones and husband Micheal Douglas who were named as left with incomplete homes on the cay, which sits just minutes away from Providenciales by boat.
All this because, Kinay found himself a casualty of the Micheal Misick administration’s corruption investigations. Named in the Commission of Inquiry, for gifting among other things half a million dollars to the governing party, Dr. Kinay found his land stripped from him and returned to the sale rack.
In a very recent letter to the TCI SUN posted just this past January he said the donation was “totally legal” and he has simply been “victimized by politics.”
Kinay had also forked out $3.2 million for Joe Grant Cay. That too was repossessed and sold in 2013.
A 350 acre section of Dellis Cay went up for auction in June 2019 and but no one bought the property. Now Desarrollos is promising to revive the island, completing the homes Kinay left behind and adding many more amenities.
Actual homes built by Kinay are also listed on real estate sites for sale, all of them only partially constructed. The property is currently listed for development by Carib Developments.
Kinay is still attached to the property and says the sale is unlawful calling on the government to put a stop to it.
In that letter to The SUN, Kinay says he will fight the Government and trust in court “at any cost”. He says he will not leave the island “which I have paid my hard-earned funds to acquire from its private owner in 2005.”