The History of the Project

Born out of a desire to build his own holiday home in an island community that demonstrated the physical beauty and personal empathy that Mario was looking for, the development project on Salt Cay has grown and changed over the years.

In 1997, Mario first visited the Turks & Caicos on vacation and as many other visitors to these islands, found himself captivated by the colour of the water, the white sand beaches and the island lifestyle.

On his first visit to Salt Cay in 1999 he found an island with a rich cultural history, a strong community spirit and a special feeling of timelessness – in short, an island that stands apart from others in the Caribbean. Shortly after this, Mario bought 11 acres on the spectacular North Beach on which he planned to build his own home.

It became apparent that Salt Cay seriously lacked the standard of infrastructure or facilities to support a luxury holiday residence and so in 2005 the idea was born to build a small boutique hotel, together with serviced residences, which would address this issue. An additional 40 acres of land was purchased to accommodate this plan.

Meanwhile development within the Turks & Caicos Islands and particularly Providenciales was proceeding quickly with high density and increasingly tall properties being built (up to 7 stories in some instances). While these resorts are all of a high standard, Mario recognized that in order to maintain his vision of a low density and sensitively developed resort, appropriate for Salt Cay, he would like to protect it from the possibility of similar development occurring on Salt Cay. He commenced discussions with the TCI Government to build a golf course as part of the development which would act as a buffer for adjacent development and add to the facilities of the resort. In the summer of 2006 an application to lease an additional 220 acres was made and this was approved in February 2007.

At this time, it became apparent that construction on Salt Cay was progressing and various private homes and ‘cottage’ developments were in evidence that demonstrated a potential for high density projects out of scale with the environment. Mario felt that these types of projects could not only damage his project vision, but ruin the special atmosphere of Salt Cay. He approached the Turks & Caicos Islands Government with the idea to create Salt Cay as a ‘green island’ - sustainably developed, using renewable energy sources and minimizing the environmental impact while significantly improving the social infrastructure.

The project today incorporates approximately 1400 acres of which 95% will remain unbuilt ensuring the Green Island vision can be realized.