The feuding camps are arguing over the best way to combat high unemployment.
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WALT DISNEY CO. This undated photo shows a Disney Cruise Line ship docked at Castaway Cay, Disney’s private island in the Bahamas. The company is trying to buy a parcel of land for a port in Eleuthera. |
By Hugo Martin, Los Angeles Times
The southern point of the Bahamian island of Eleuthera is a postcard-perfect paradise with white-sand beaches, limestone bluffs and turquoise-blue waters.
Disney Cruise Line, part of the Walt Disney Co. entertainment empire, wants to buy 746 acres at the southern end of the 110-mile-long island to develop a cruise port with a pier, shops, a marina, restaurants and walkways through a nearby forest and around salt ponds.
But a local nonprofit group, with the support of Bahamian environmentalists, has put forward a competing plan that it said will create more jobs and keep more tourism revenue on the island, home to about 11,000 residents, with a park developed by the island.
The rival plans have split locals into feuding camps who argue over the best way to combat high unemployment on the long, thin island 50 miles east of Nassau and part of a collection known by Bahamians as the Family Islands. Read more >>