Gor­don “Butch” Stew­art, the Ja­maican ho­tel mogul who de­vel­oped San­dals in­to a glob­al­ly recog­nised brand, was yes­ter­day de­scribed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley as a “Caribbean man of whom we are all proud.”

Dr Row­ley was among lead­ers from across the re­gion pay­ing trib­ute to the 79-year-old leg­endary en­tre­pre­neur who died late Mon­day fol­low­ing a brief ill­ness.

Stew­art’s son, Adam, an­nounced the death Mon­day in a memo to em­ploy­ees, de­scrib­ing it as “al­most un­be­liev­able” giv­en his con­tin­ued in­volve­ment in the busi­ness and his “for­ward-think­ing” about the com­pa­ny’s fu­ture. At the time of his death, Stew­art was work­ing on plans for re­cent­ly an­nounced ex­pan­sions to Cu­ra­cao and St Vin­cent.

“He chose to keep a very re­cent health di­ag­no­sis pri­vate and we re­spect­ed that wish,” Adam Stew­art said.

There was al­so a state­ment from San­dals: “While he nev­er laid claim to in­vent­ing the all-in­clu­sive con­cept, he is recog­nised world­wide for his tire­less ef­fort to el­e­vate the va­ca­tion ex­pe­ri­ence, de­liv­er­ing to his guests an un­sur­passed lev­el of lux­u­ry, and to share his cer­tain­ty that a Caribbean com­pa­ny could suc­cess­ful­ly com­pete with any or­gan­i­sa­tion in the world. He ac­com­plished both.”

In a post on his Face­book page, Dr Row­ley said Stew­art’s death left “a great void through­out the Caribbean.”

He said he was pleased to have in­ter­act­ed with him and his thoughts had left an im­pact on him which he had shared with col­leagues in T&T and across the re­gion.

“His lega­cy, as I see it, should be that he built an in­ter­na­tion­al brand, by giv­ing trust, en­cour­age­ment, and con­grat­u­la­tions when re­quired, to oth­ers, help­ing them to find their own way in their lives and the world.

“This death is a great loss for the re­gion, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time when we all need­ed him to go for­ward,” Dr Row­ley said.

Al­so pay­ing trib­ute was Prof Sir Hi­lary Beck­les, Vice-Chan­cel­lor of UWI: “Our “Butch”, like Bob and Bolt, rep­re­sents this cul­tur­al spir­it of the ages. It is born to be brash, brave and bril­liant, con­sti­tut­ing a cas­cad­ing com­mit­ment to na­tion-build­ing and re­gion­al re­nais­sance. Our Butch was the ‘stew­art’ of this spir­it and gave to Ja­maica, the Caribbean and the world a per­for­mance of sheer class with cool run­nings—a ‘san­dal­iza­tion’ of awe and amaze­ment.”

Stew­art had es­tab­lished ho­tels in sev­er­al parts of the Caribbean by the time he turned his at­ten­tion to To­ba­go where there were plans to es­tab­lish a San­dals and Beach­es Re­sort. The US$441.8 mil­lion project, which was ex­pect­ed to be the biggest ever un­der­tak­en by the re­sort group, was to be a 700 to 1,000 room re­sort com­plex in­tend­ed to be a key com­po­nent of the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion’s eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy.

How­ev­er, af­ter months of ne­go­ti­a­tions that were of­ten over­shad­owed by con­tro­ver­sy, in mid-Jan­u­ary 2019 San­dals’ ex­ec­u­tives an­nounced that they would no longer be pur­su­ing the project.

Born in 1941 in Kingston, Ja­maica, Stew­art found­ed San­dals Re­sorts in 1981 with the open­ing of San­dals Mon­tego Bay. Since then the San­dals port­fo­lio gas ex­pend­ed to in­clude in­cludes the Grand Pineap­ple Beach Re­sort brand, Fowl Cay Re­sort in the Ba­hamas and the Your Ja­maican Vil­las pri­vate home col­lec­tion.

Stew­art is sur­vived by his wife Cheryl; chil­dren Bri­an, Bob­by, Adam, Jaime, Sab­ri­na, Gor­don and Kel­ly; 12 grand­chil­dren; and four great-grand­chil­dren.

• See Page 22