The Central Planning Authority has approved the Westin hotel’s delayed plans to add a 10-storey, 234-bedroom tower and a 18,410-square-foot conference facility to its site, after a final hurdle relating to off-site parking was resolved.
In a first for Cayman’s hotel industry, the hotel on Seven Mile Beach recently received planning permission for an off-site car park with a shuttle bus service to ferry guests between the two locations.
While several hotels and restaurants on island offer shuttle services for guests and customers, having a shuttle service between a hotel and its car park is understood to be a new initiative and could possibly pave the way for other hotels to do the same.
Cayman’s planning regulations require at least 50% of parking to be located no further than 500 feet away from the respective building, but plans by the Westin as part of its $153 million expansion project require 97% of parking to be more than the maximum distance allowed.
The hotel’s owners, Invincible Investment Corporation, received planning permission in July 2023 for the expansion, but that CPA decision was appealed and the matter was adjourned a number of times while the parking issue and other matters were addressed.
The existing Westin resort was built between 1994 and 1999 and currently consists of a five-storey hotel with 343 guest rooms, a pool, a spa facility, meeting and conference space, and two restaurants. A planning application for the new hotel annex and conference facilities was first submitted on 12 Oct. 2022.
With the car park now dealt with, it is thought that the hotel will be able to move forward with the development plans.
Shuttle loop
The off-site car park will contain at least 350 parking spaces and be located just north of Sunshine Suites. Three 30-seater, air-conditioned Toyota buses will ferry guests between the car park to the Westin via the Esterley Tibbetts Highway in an anti-clockwise loop, running every 10 minutes in high season and taking around five minutes to the hotel and eight minutes back to the car park.
Due to the objections raised, the hotel amended its plans so that the only way for guests to travel between the hotel and the off-site car park was via a shuttle bus.
Supported by tourism ministry
According to minutes from the CPA meeting held on 19 March, the planning board said that the percentage of off-site parking being proposed by the applicant will allow for “the orderly development, expansion and upgrading of facilities required to maintain a successful tourism industry”, a position which is also supported by the Department of Tourism.
The board also noted that the off-site parking will be open to the community, including patrons of nearby businesses and beach-goers. It also said that the objector to the car park had not raised sufficient grounds for permission to be refused, as the shuttle bus will avoid people walking across the objector’s land.