Failed Fiji resort heading for TV stardom

By ANNE GIBSON

A failed Fiji resort in which more than 1000 New Zealand investors lost up to $15,000 each will become the set for a "reality" television show.

The Lakomai Resort has been taken over on a 99-year lease by New Zealand television production company Touchdown Group.

Touchdown chief executive Julie Christie plans to renovate it and run it as a film set and a holiday resort.

The property deal is a new direction for Touchdown, founded and majority-owned by Ms Christie.

Her $35 million-plus company has produced nine series of Celebrity Treasure Island - two for Ireland, one for Australia and six for New Zealand.

It also makes Changing Rooms and My House My Castle.

Touchdown has a team of people on the Fijian site developing a master plan and upgrading the property.

The resort, on Malolo Island, is expected to be ready for its film crew and holidaymakers early next year.

Julie Christie said she had a deal with an overseas network to make a reality series at Lakomai

Guests would be able to stay at the resort while filming was going on.

"You can go and stay there - it's part of the show," she said.

Ms Christie distanced herself and her company from last year's failure of a planned timeshare scheme at the resort.

More than 1000 New Zealand investors paid up to $15,000 each, but have been shut out of Lakomai since December, when the landowners cancelled the resort's lease.

The Fijian landowners claim timeshare promoter Frank Yeates did not honour an agreement to pay them a share of the profits - reported to be as much as $3.2 million.

The disenfranchised timeshare investors lost a court battle in Fiji to stop the sale to Touchdown.

Ms Christie said she had nothing to do with the timeshare business, and just wanted to get on with opening the resort.

Touchdown's deal meant about 25 people living in a nearby village would get income, about 45 hotel staff would be employed and the resort would be re-opened, she said.

Touchdown's director of business affairs - and Julie Christie's brother - Mike Molloy, challenged reports that Touchdown had paid $3.1 million for Lakomai, including $250,000 lodged in a solicitor's trust fund in a settlement with Frank Yeates.

He said the deal was subject to confidentiality clauses in the contract.

"This gives us certainty."

He said he had been hunting for a resort for a long time.

Lakomai, nestled among palm trees fronting the beach and at the foot of a small hill, exactly fitted his requirements.

Although Touchdown would get a new revenue source from the resort as a business, Mr Molloy said this was not the main reason for its purchase.

Touchdown had no plans to become a property developer and would be sticking to its main business.

The resort needs "a significant amount of money" spent on it, but Julie Christie is not saying how much she paid for the 99-year lease.

Foreigners cannot buy Fijian land, which is controlled by Fiji's Native Lands Trust Board.

Julie Christie said Lakomai would become a four-star resort, and accommodation for 70 people in 20 bures scattered throughout the sandy site would be expanded so the resort could accommodate up to 120 people.