The team behind plans for a new restaurant at Jersey’s Elizabeth Harbour terminal say they’re ‘heartbroken’ the project has been scrapped.
Marcus Calvani, who operates a number of restaurants in the island under the Calvani Group umbrella, announced plans for Terminal GBJ more than four years ago as part of a partnership with Ports of Jersey to create a new food outlet at the harbour.
Ports of Jersey say they have been working closely alongside Terminal GBJ for some time to develop the plans, but last year announced delays in delivering on the original idea, which they said were down to the poor state of the site and being over ambitious in their initial design work. Today they announced the project was off.
In a statement they said: “Revised plans were developed and agreed, and investment approval for the project, which was to be fully funded by Ports of Jersey into a reduced scoped facility was confirmed by its Board of Directors. In order for Ports of Jersey to make this significant capital investment and Terminal GBJ to operate the facility we required a set of legal contracts to be agreed prior to committing to the development work.”
“We iterated a set of agreements in spring and summer 2017, but unfortunately, formal agreement could not be reached between Ports of Jersey and Terminal GBJ to allow us to move the project forward. In October 2017 Terminal GBJ advised Ports of Jersey that it could not agree to the final set of contracts and the project stopped.”
In a statement entitled ‘feeling heartbroken’, Terminal GBJ said: “We can stand back, disappointed and sad that it has come to this but at least knowing that we as a company put everything into trying to make this project become a reality and more. Thousands of hours of work, a huge amount of money, dedication, creativity, a desire to better our island and the offering at our harbour gateway. We have never put this project on the back burner, we have always been dedicated and continued to push, we have worked with some amazing people and have had some great support from many different states departments, who we have grown to know well.”
As Ports continue their negotiations with a new party, the Calvani Group have agreed to continue to operate the temporary kiosk at the terminal.
Ports of Jersey say they’re still aiming to get something opened by this summer but that it will be “challenging”.
