THE 250-room Fiji Marriott Resort Momi Bay is scheduled to be officially opened at the end of March and is expected to generate about 400 employments and attract major opportunities for Fiji.
In light of the completion of the resort and its opening next month, the original designers of the project, Architects Pacific, has decided to shed some light on how the idea of the resort came about and their work on the initial design.
Architects Pacific director Stuart Hugget said they started on the project when a gentleman from Canada who owned substantial track of land at Momi and his grandson asked them to look at the site and see what could be done with it.
“The interesting thing about the area is that it has a beach and right along the cover beach you have the cane road,” said Mr Hugget.
“So we said why don’t we dig out the sand towards the reef and make some islands and peninsular.”
According to Mr Hugget, the duo were keen on the idea but then the gentleman died and another client of Architects Pacific — Gary Owen became excited about the project and raised the money for the project.
Once the money for the project was raised, Architects Pacific started its work on the design.
Mr Hugget said they did all drawings for the $120 million JW Marriot resort project and they also did a master plan for the whole area because it’s a very big site — about 1000acres.
The original architects did the project in several phases — a lovely golf course, three or four hotels and residences with many of them having beach frontage.
It would have been well underway if not for the 2000 political upheaval which put an end to any further work on the project and it in a way destroyed the first phase.
“We haven’t been involved in the completion of the resort but from what I can see, they have followed the original designs very closely.
“The idea of the original design was to follow the traditional Fijian canoe house which sits over the water.”
According to Mr Hugget, the project was initially designed so that the sale of the lots would pay for the construction of the hotel.
He said there were about 200 lots and they were all sold at the time the hotel construction started.
Mr Hugget said there were some building structures which were bit different from their design but concept was based on the initial designs.
