Chapter 9: The Club

After discussing my rough ideas with Juan and Duerte, and with their valuable input, my plans congealed. Refined and improved, my dream for a business venture is coalescing into a implementable plan. A seaport men’s club franchise. Financially modeled on the original Playboy’s club scheme. Culturally modeled on traditional British men’s clubs. In some aspects similar to an Officers club. A dress code will be enforced. Civility and respectful manners enforced. Two original locations are planned as start up facilities, one in Paramaribo in Suriname and one here in Georgetown, Guyana.

Duerte located an antiquated hotel for purchase here in Georgetown. Located adjacent to but not in the ritzy area of town, it’s likely to be absorbed in an expansion of the growing affluent area. The city thinks so. The local streets are already being widened and resurfaced in anticipation. Real-estate speculation is only beginning and the prices only moderately escalated. We bought in pre-peak. Of course I provided the down-payment. Duerte arranged for a mortgage, using his family reputation and old family friend status with senior banking officials. We offered a pair of free memberships in the proposed club as an inducement to compete. Whoever succeeded in offering the most liberal repayment schedule and interest rate, was awarded more than the mortgage contract for his bank, but personal membership for the bank’s president and the official pitching for us. Got great terms on a thirty year fixed rate.

Duerte is very enthused with the project. We completely gutted and rebuilt the former hotel. The modernized structure has an engineered steel skeleton, with an engineered foundation, installed inside the original stone exterior walls which we retain. The exterior was cleaned by extremely high pressure water blasting and chemically sealed with transparent anti-graffiti silicone based paint. Stuff is so slick, spray paint won’t even cling to it, just slides to eventually puddle on the ground. Not worried about graffiti overmuch, it just makes rinsing away sea salt and wind deposited dust, a quick garden hose affair. The exterior is all we retained and the first innovation, was a freight elevator to facilitate replacing the old rotting wooden roof with a concrete slab, now supported by internal steel girders and columns. From there, we built an entirely new modern interior working from the top down, floor by floor. Has advantages. The completed floors can be used immediately without safety concerns over dropped falling construction objects or tools.

Duerte is ecstatic about his just completed sixth floor penthouse. The eighth level, is the roof garden and tented with palm thatch pavilions and gaily striped canvas, to shade the building from the tropical sun. Air conditioning units are located on the roof, hidden with evergreen aromatic shrubbery. The seventh floor, just beneath the tented roof, contains air-conditioned offices for management functions, and generous storage for linens, supplies, and unused equipment. It’s the only floor with windows, and they function, can be opened to vent the heated air the roof generates despite the shade tenting.