When the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor came to Jamaica in 1948, he was captivated by the home of a retired British spy who had just laid the last stone of a simple, spacious villa shielded by a coral reef on the island's north coast.
A power for good, Mr. Bond?
When the travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor came to Jamaica in 1948, he was captivated by the home of a retired British spy who had just laid the last stone of a simple, spacious villa shielded by a coral reef on the island's north coast.
Fermor had visited a leper colony in Trinidad and watched voodoo rituals in Haiti to collect material for his portrait of the Caribbean, The Traveller's Tree. But it was in the lush forests beside the banana port at Oracabessa that he saw the future of the New World: "Here, on a headland, Commander Ian Fleming has built a house called Goldeneye that might serve as a model for new houses in the tropics," he wrote.
Today, a property company led by Chris Blackwell, the Jamaican music producer who made a fortune selling reggae to a Western audience, is taking up Fermor's idea. Blackwell bought Goldeneye and the 15 acres surrounding it in 1977 - 13 years after the death of Fleming, who wrote all 13 James Bond novels at a corner desk in the villa's master bedroom.
At one stage, it looked as if the house might pass into the hands of Bob Marley, Blackwell's most illustrious act, who contemplated blowing a chunk of his royalties on the estate. However, he decided it was "too posh" for his tastes. Instead, Blackwell, whose family knew the Flemings, pounced and his company, Island Outpost, has since expanded its holding to 100 acres and built four luxury villas in Goldeneye's grounds, which it lets to the famous and the rich, including Rachel Weisz and Naomi Campbell.
This summer it will embark on a £50 million development which it believes could play a big part in transforming the island's future. The company insists that this is more than just another attempt to cash in on the rapid increase of well-heeled tourism to Jamaica. The project, it says, is geared to bringing jobs and money to the local market, and especially to St Mary's, one of the island's poorest areas.
The planned buildings will include a school to equip locals with the skills to earn a decent living - in particular, to fill the 200 jobs the development will create. And a James Bond Fishermen's Cooperative will allow 30 local spear-fishermen and trawlers to eke out a sustainable trade from the over-fished waters of Oracabessa Bay.
The 80 new properties, among them beach cottages, lagoon villas and apartments, will be furnished in cosmopolitan style and nestle between swimming pools, tropical bars and the Caribbean's first seawater spa. They will range from 10 one-bedroom cove huts, starting at £320,000, to a pair of luxurious, three-bedroom, four-bathroom lagoon villas boasting 5,000 sq ft of space. Among the only new over-water properties in the Caribbean, each will fetch in excess of £1.8 million.
"We are trying to craft the Goldeneye community," says Roger Brown, Island Outpost's development director, striding between the palm trees and the lengths of twine that currently demark the plots.
He claims there is already "serious interest" in 25 of the first 40 properties, due to be completed in 2008. He expects seven out of 10 buyers to let their properties under a voluntary rental scheme. The proceeds will be shared equally between owner and operator.
According to the hyperbolic PR blurb, buyers will acquire "a licence to chill" in "a community of free spirits dedicated to living an inventive, balanced life where the imagination and the environment could co-exist in perfect harmony". Bond "would willingly put down his guns, girls and gadgets to lose himself - and find himself - in the Goldeneye spa".
Thus far, these prospective free spirits are largely people who move in Blackwell's circle - fashion designers, actors, media figures, musicians - alongside the odd diplomat and hedge-fund millionaire. Now, "sneak preview" tours of the site are available, at a price.
"It's very much about the network," says Jason Henzell, the president of Island Outpost. "On the previews, we vet you, you vet us. If someone just wrote us a cheque, we probably wouldn't take it."
Mr Henzell, also a director of the Jamaica Tourist Board, adds that the principal criterion of this mutual vetting is that potential buyers "get it"; in other words, that they buy into the vision as well as the property. "Any hint of pretension is a huge no-no," he says. "And we are nationalistic. We want massive expansion in Jamaica. We need the jobs, we want the foreign exchange," he says.
And it's much-needed. As Jamaica's sugar and banana industries wither, leaving almost one in three unemployed, the island's economy has come to depend on tourism.
The coast road to Oracabessa from Montego Bay underlines the point. Known as Highway 2000, it alternates between stretches of gleaming Tarmac with sections of precarious track. For 60 miles, across from the fading bauxite mines and defunct plantations, the road's seaward side bristles with bulldozers and is thick with the dust of construction as Spanish and American companies rush to throw up hotels, resorts and apartment blocks bigger than anything Jamaica has seen before.
But tourism alone is not enough. "Only a fraction of people have found jobs in tourism," says Clayton Hinds, 33, a member of the Goldeneye staff, as he navigates the cavernous potholes of the five-mile drive from Fleming's villa to Port Maria. "The rest are sitting around, waiting for jobs, or going back to school and migrating because there's nothing for them here.
"If every investor behaved the way Mr Blackwell does, it would make a big difference to Jamaica. The area was stagnant; now it's lifting. There's a sense of urgency."
Roddy Thompson, a 50-year-old who currently takes odd jobs as a carpenter, is less upbeat about Goldeneye's expansion. Unwinding after a hard day's drinking at the Golden Nugget rum shop in Port Maria, a teeming town of 20,000, he complains: "Saint Mary's is in a hole. We don't get any attention." Like half of Port Maria's inhabitants, neither of his two sons can find work: "There's work for some who don't want it and none for some that do."
Even those who have landed jobs as tour guides and hotel staff can expect to earn a paltry $120 a fortnight - a living of roughly £5 per day.
Port Maria is a rambunctious, welcoming place that belies Jamaica's reputation for violence - a stereotype based on the dizzying murder-rate in the suburbs of Kingston. But it is in Oracabessa, 10 minutes' walk from Goldeneye, that one would expect to see the promised benefits of the new development really bear fruit.
There, too, the 5,000 residents are growing tired of waiting for the tourists' dollars to start trickling down to them. Joyce Sawyer, 54, runs the House of Joy restaurant on Oracabessa's main thoroughfare. Her rent is climbing, her takings falling. She may have to close. "The tourists walk through the town. One once came in for a beer. But they don't usually stop here," she says. "Blackwell's place might be good for some people. But not me."
There are other locals with reason to be sceptical. They remember 2001 and the tourist slump that followed 9/11; and they recall with a shudder Hurricane Ivan, which tore through the Caribbean in 2004, levelling another of Blackwell's resorts. They are also disillusioned with "sticky-fingered" politicians, whom they accuse of cynically "piggybacking" on the Goldeneye initiative.
For others, however, Blackwell's name is synonymous with hope. "We've been promised development for a long time, especially at Goldeneye," says Alan Clarke, a thoughtful Rastafarian, as he weaves Jamaica's trademark hemp hats. "Now, we're all waiting for the call."
Mr Clarke, 46, would normally employ two staff at the Jah Mak Yah craft shop. This year, as sales decline, he sits alone. Like the schoolgirls who loiter and giggle outside his shop, his future depends on foreigners coming to Jamaica.
"This area has a rich heritage. But it's rural and poor - prime for development," Mr Clarke says. "Something needs to happen soon. Jamaica depends on it."
Goldeneye's Roger Brown remains confident. He describes the project as "an alternative model that stands for something. If it succeeds, it'll be replicated."
Potentially, the knock-on effects could be massive. There are already reports of copycat developments across the Caribbean, low-density builds that contrast with the megalithic hotels elsewhere on the coast, the biggest of which is facing a legal challenge on environmental grounds.
In its sworn commitment to sharing the benefits of expansion with the locals, the new, expanded Goldeneye may be exemplary. But, as an aged Jamaican once remarked to Patrick Leigh Fermor: "We're always going somewhere, but we never get there." Only time will tell whether Goldeneye will prove to be the model that Fermor envisaged.
Preview tours cost from £1,115 for a three-night stay for two people. Prices include accommodation, food and drink; flights are extra. All UK inquiries to Riva PR: 020 8704 4500. Other information: www.goldeneyedevelopment.com; www.islandoutpost.com.
Local agencies include Century 21 Heave-Ho Properties (www.century21jm.com) and Nigel Pemberton (www.nigelpemberton.com).
Mr Pemberton, an Englishman with more than 40 years' experience of selling properties in Jamaica, says there are two golden rules: buy only through a licensed real estate dealer and use a really good lawyer. Both will advise about taxes - one bonus is that there is no capital gains tax on any profits made when you sell.
