The New Zealand hotel developer Tim Tepaki has been given more time to complete the long-awaited 200-room Vaimaanga Hotel Project in the Cook Islands.
But the Cook Islands Times says landowner Pa Ariki intends holding the developer to the new deadlines, which could see the hotel not fully open now till August 2008.
Mr Tepaki and Dan McEwan are spearheading the redevelopment of a 1990s project which was intended to build a five-star 180-room Sheraton hotel.
But this left only an empty shell of buildings at the site on Rarotonga despite millions of dollars poured into it.
The developers plan to use the existing buildings and reshape the beach and lagoon to bring it into the property.
The newspaper says a deed of variation to the original lease has been agreed extending the completion time from from December 2007 by eight months.
