The Public Park Baker’s Bay Promised Great Guana Cay — and Apparently Never Built
In 2005 Baker’s Bay promised Great Guana Cay a five-to-eight-acre public waterfront park — a dock, restrooms, a gazebo and unfettered shoreline access, due by 2008. Twenty-one years later, we still can’t find it.
Published September 21, 2026
In 2005, Baker’s Bay agreed to build Great Guana Cay a public waterfront park. The promise was remarkably specific: five to eight acres, 500 feet of Sea of Abaco shoreline, public access, restrooms, a gazebo, parking and a dock. It was supposed to be finished by 2008. In 2012, Baker’s Bay acknowledged it had not been built and said it expected completion within another year. In 2015, Troy Albury was still describing the beach park as an outstanding commitment. Today, we have not found convincing evidence that the promised park was ever completed as agreed.
In 2005, as part of the agreement that allowed Baker’s Bay Golf & Ocean Club to transform the northern end of Great Guana Cay, the developer made a remarkably specific promise to the existing community.
It would build a public waterfront park.
Not someday. Not somewhere. Not merely provide access to a strip of beach.
The 2005 Heads of Agreement required a park of five to eight acres, on private and Crown land adjacent to the preserve, at a projected cost of $250,000. The park was to have 500 feet of frontage on the Sea of Abaco, “unfettered access” to that shoreline, and facilities including a gazebo or discovery/observation center, golf-cart parking, restrooms and a dock.
And because the park was included among the Phase 1 Development Projects, the agreement established a completion deadline: June 1, 2008.
Nearly two decades after that deadline, there is a basic problem.
Where is it?
“There’s Not Even a Start”
By 2012, the deadline had been missed by four years.
Troy Albury, a Great Guana Cay businessman and president of the Save Guana Cay Reef Association, told Tribune Business that Baker’s Bay continued receiving approvals for private construction while the community facilities remained untouched.
“There’s not even a start.”
Albury said no permits or drawings had been completed for either the beach park or community center. He pointed out that these facilities were supposed to have been finished before Baker’s Bay proceeded into Phase 2.
The significance of the 2012 article is that Baker’s Bay did not claim the park existed.
Livingston Marshall, Baker’s Bay’s senior vice president of environmental and community affairs, acknowledged that several public facilities had not been constructed according to the schedule in the Heads of Agreement. He blamed the recession and delays involving leases and government approvals, while arguing that Baker’s Bay had prioritized keeping Bahamians employed.
Marshall nevertheless made another specific promise.
Baker’s Bay said the beach park was in the design stage and that it anticipated completion “within the next 12 calendar months.” That statement was published August 27, 2012.
The new deadline was therefore roughly August 2013.
2015: The Park Is Still a Promise
Two years later, the story had apparently not changed.
In February 2015, Albury told The Tribune that the Great Guana Cay community had been waiting “for a long time” for Baker’s Bay to fulfill obligations in the Heads of Agreement. The newspaper specifically included creation of the beach park among the outstanding commitments he identified.
In May 2015, Albury again raised Baker’s Bay’s unfulfilled obligations. Once again, The Tribune listed the beach park among them.
This time his comments came in the context of something especially relevant to the idea of a public park: access.
Albury said residents had been denied access to Baker’s Bay for years and said they were blocked from using a portion of the publicly owned Queen’s Highway through the property.
“We can’t see where the spoil from the dredging is ending up.”
His immediate subject was dredging, but the reason locals could not inspect it was revealing: according to Albury, they could not freely enter the development.
That matters enormously when evaluating a promise of “unfettered access” to a public park.
Then the Park Moved
By around 2015–16, the story changed again.
A Baker’s Bay case study described a proposed five-acre public beach park on the Sea of Abaco, now including not merely the original gazebo and restrooms but a grass sports field and regulation basketball court. It said construction was expected to begin at the end of 2015.
At the time, Notes from the Road recorded that Baker’s Bay had applied for a permit and that the proposed park had been shifted to separate property adjacent to the staff-housing area.
That detail deserves much more attention today.
The original Heads of Agreement did not simply say: give the public five acres somewhere.
It specified a park on private and Crown land “adjacent to the Preserve,” with 500 feet of Sea of Abaco frontage and unfettered public access.
We have not found a publicly available amendment showing that the original obligation was formally replaced by a park beside Baker’s Bay employee housing. Nor have we found a subsequent announcement documenting that the relocated park was actually completed.
And today we can look at the area ourselves.
So Where Is the Park?
Recent Google Earth imagery shows the southern operational end of Baker’s Bay with unusual clarity.
If the proposed public park was indeed moved beside Baker’s Bay’s employee housing, the only plausible area appears to be the Sea of Abaco shoreline immediately south of the employee-housing and service complex, near the area now labeled Papa Willie’s.
The satellite image at the top of this page is worth studying carefully.
This is not a public recreation area sitting naturally between the Great Guana Cay settlement and the shoreline. It is tucked against the backside of Baker’s Bay’s infrastructure.
Immediately inland are rows of employee housing. Beyond them is an enormous operational and construction compound filled with equipment, storage areas, containers, buildings and work yards. Large roads serving Baker’s Bay pass through the area. Commercial docks and the resort’s seaport facilities occupy the waterfront nearby.
For somebody coming north from the Great Guana Cay settlement, there is no obvious dedicated public approach visible in the satellite imagery leading directly into a recognizable five-acre park.
Instead, the apparent route approaches through Baker’s Bay’s operational and employee-housing area.
That does not prove that the public is legally prohibited from reaching the shoreline. Satellite imagery cannot tell us what permissions exist on the ground, whether an unmarked public easement has been established, or whether facilities invisible from above have at some point existed.
But that is almost beside the point.
Where is the park?
- Where is the entrance?
- Where is the signage identifying it as a public facility?
- Where is the unmistakable five-to-eight-acre recreational space?
- Where is the gazebo or discovery center?
- Where are the restrooms and public golf-cart parking?
- Where is the public dock associated with it?
- Where is the public access route from the settlement?
- And where is the record showing that Baker’s Bay ever completed the thing?
A Public Park Behind the Service Yard?
There is something almost perverse about the geography.
Baker’s Bay occupies roughly 600 acres of some of the most spectacular waterfront on Great Guana Cay. Its members enjoy miles of shoreline, a golf course, pools, restaurants, sports facilities and a huge marina. Baker’s Bay’s present website describes the property as an exclusive, members-only community and states that club access is limited to members and escorted guests.
Its own current site maps meticulously identify amenities ranging from the Beach Club and Marina Village to pickleball courts, playgrounds, restaurants, swimming pools, sports fields and Sunset Park.
They identify Joe’s Creek.
They identify the Mangrove Preserve.
They identify East Village, the Sea Port, and even Papa Willie’s.
They do not identify a public beach park.
That omission is striking.
If the anonymous patch of shoreline beside the employee compound is actually the fulfillment of the 2005 Heads of Agreement, then Baker’s Bay appears to have taken one of its few obligations specifically intended for the people of Great Guana Cay and relegated it to one of the least inviting corners of its enormous property: behind staff housing, beside service infrastructure and beyond a landscape dominated by the machinery necessary to support the luxury community next door.
And if that shoreline isn’t the public park?
Then we are back to the original question.
Where is it?
“They Haven’t Lived Up to Their Commitments”
Troy Albury understood the imbalance very early.
In 2012, while new private houses continued going through the approval process, he told Tribune Business:
“They haven’t lived up to their commitments at all with regard to the local community.”
Baker’s Bay disputed that characterization. Marshall argued that the developers had fulfilled their obligations overall and said delayed community projects would be completed.
That defense becomes harder to reconcile with the surviving public record with each passing year.
The marina got built.
The golf course got built.
The private homes got built.
The Beach Club got built.
The restaurants got built.
The pools got built.
The tennis courts got built.
The pickleball courts got built.
The playgrounds got built.
Baker’s Bay’s 2025 site map is crowded with the things the development has constructed for its members.
But more than twenty years after the Heads of Agreement was signed, we have been unable to locate convincing evidence that the five-to-eight-acre public waterfront park promised to Great Guana Cay was ever completed as agreed.
That distinction is important. There may be some parcel that Baker’s Bay or the Government regards administratively as satisfying the requirement. There may even be a patch of public shoreline beside the employee compound that was eventually designated for that purpose.
But a designation on paper is not what the agreement promised.
The agreement promised a park.
- Five to eight acres.
- Five hundred feet of Sea of Abaco shoreline.
- A gazebo or observation center.
- Restrooms.
- Golf-cart parking.
- A dock.
- And unfettered public access.
In 2008, it was supposed to be finished.
In 2012, Albury said it had not even gotten started, and Baker’s Bay responded by saying it expected completion within another twelve months.
In 2015, Albury said the community had been waiting a long time.
And in 2026, Baker’s Bay can publish detailed maps showing practically every amenity on its vast private property without showing the public park at all.
Perhaps Baker’s Bay can produce documents proving that the obligation was fulfilled.
Until then, the available record tells a much simpler story:
Great Guana Cay was promised a public waterfront park. Twenty-one years later, we still cannot find it.