So, NCL's ships will go almost exclusively to Harvest Caye to ensure the greatest revenue stream for that Island port. While that has city tour guides already feeling the pain, last month we spoke to Andrew Caliz - a Toledo Tour Operator who also says he's been boxed out. Caliz owns Big Falls Extreme Adventure on the Rio Grande River in Big Falls Village. He had connected with Tom Wilson's H2O Tierra to rent out his riverside property. But the deal fell through, and H2O Tierra ended up renting from the Big Falls Lodge, further up the Rio Grande.
Yesterday we asked Wilson if he gave Caliz a raw deal:...
Tom Wilson
"Contrary to what he might have said, we actually worked for Mr. Caliz for more than a year and a half trying to come to an agreement to utilize his site there at big falls. He had an investment there yes, BTB actually contacted us and asked us to please try and work with him. We started more than 2 years ago negotiating on Mr. Caliz to use his property. We invested quite a few thousand dollars putting together a contract agreement. Also we surveyed out the area that we would be using so that we could actually use a legal description in the contract. And unbeknownst to us, Mr. Caliz represented that he owned the property, but in the last days just before signing of the contract, I asked Mr. Caliz 'please show me your land title before we sign off' because we were doing a very large investment there. Mr. Caliz said 'I don't really own the land, it's still in my mother's name, it was in her will and all my brothers and sisters own the property'. That negated any possibility of us being able to work with Mr. Caliz on that property. At that point in time we only had 2 months left before the ships were coming here at harvest Caye and we had to scramble like wild people to be able to put together a venue so we can actually employ the people that we do employ now. Mr. Caliz could have been upfront in the very beginning and let us know he did not own the property and we could have made some kind of arrangement to possibly use it. It came as a total surprise to us and that's what caused us not to have the opportunity to work with Mr. Caliz even though we made extensive efforts to do so."
Daniel Ortiz, 7News
"So this claim that you all at the last minute changed the goal post, forcing him out is a misrepresentation?"
Tom Wilson
"Well we weren't the ones changing the goal post, they were on his property and those goal posts were changed by someone other than ourselves."
Wilson stressed to us that he could not expose his company to liabilities because Caliz doesn't actually own the property - his family does collectively. Caliz says his other siblings had indicated, in writing, their readiness to sign it over. Wilson says time ran out, and he had to make urgent preparations or risk losing the Harvest Caye connect.
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