“DID YOU HEAR THEM THIS MORNING?”
Lauren Ebanks asks, with a chuckle in her voice,
pointing to a flock of clucking hens crossing
the street.
While some people come to Grand Cayman,
the largest of the Cayman Islands, for endless
white beaches and to snorkel among stingrays,
turtles and starfish, Ebanks, an insider who has
lived in this British Caribbean outpost for most
of her life, recognizes her balmy tax-free haven
as the capital of free-range chickens.
The birds were set loose more than a dozen
years ago by Hurricane Ivan, which leveled
houses and backyard coops across the island.
When the storm subsided, the AWOL poultry
promptly multiplied.
The rest of the story wasn’t as funny. Five
months after the hurricane, the beautiful islands
still didn’t have power and fewer than half the
resorts bordering Grand Cayman’s famed
Seven Mile Beach were functional. The storm
damage was catastrophic, and without Ebanks’
employer, Dart Real Estate, leading the rebuilding charge, the island might still be recovering.
George Town, the capital where cruise ships
dock, now has rows of quaint red metal-roofed
buildings that now adhere to stringent building
codes. North of it, west-facing Seven Mile Beach
is dotted with peak-roofed resorts also made of
concrete and steel to weather storms that come
in from the east. And a new fortified township
called Camana Bay, with a central tower fitted
with colorful shutters, evokes bungalows of the
kind seen in nearby Jamaica or Cuba.
However, Dart’s latest building project on
the north end of Seven Mile Beach — the
Kimpton Seafire Resort + Spa and residences,
designed by San Francisco’s SB Architects — is
deliberately different.
Rectangular, modern and standing 10 stories
high, it is the island’s tallest structure.
At first Dart considered renovating a motel
building that stood right on the water, and
San Francisco’s Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant
Group, which specializes in boutique establishments in old repurposed buildings, was going
to run it. But Dart’s decision to tear down the
motel offered Kimpton a unique opportunity to
launch its first and only international boutique
resort in a new building.
As luck would have it, the design team also
included interior designers Powerstrip Studio
from Los Angeles and Florida-based EDSA
landscape architects — firms that SB Architects
had collaborated with on previous projects. PH
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