Almost 200 Atrium owners join
injunction against Festiva Resorts
PHILIPSBURG--Almost 200 owners of timeshare units at Atrium Beach Resort in Simpson Bay have joined the injunction filed in the Court of First Instance in December against Festiva Resorts, headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, and Atrium for what they consider an illegal increase of maintenance fees and assessments.
The injunction will be handled in Court today, after Judge Frans Vennix had given parties two weeks’ time to try and settle the matter outside the Court.
The timeshare owners are expected to pay the new fees and assessments no later than January 31. They consider the demanded increase to be too high, and in breach of their contracts. Festiva maintains that the amount is needed to repair and upgrade the resort.
Festiva Resorts mailed out a newsletter in November 2006, in which the timeshare owners were informed that the Annual Maintenance Fee (AMF) was being increased by 10 per cent, and that due to severe negligence by the previous Atrium management, it was also necessary to bill an additional assessment equal to twice the AMF. Festiva took over the resort in October 2005.
However, according to the litigants, their contracts are very specific as to the AMF, which they say cannot exceed the yearly Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the Netherlands Antilles on any given year. There are no allowances for assessments, they uphold.
“Festiva was obviously not prepared for the onslaught of letters, e-mails, and phone calls expressing their blatant disregard for our contracts,” Donna Parrish, one of the Atrium Resort owners, wrote in an e-mail sent to The Daily Herald this week.
“They quickly added an item number to the Atrium Rules and Regulations booklet that included their right to bill assessments whenever the need arose. They claim it should have always been there and couldn’t understand why we didn’t have a copy. This document is nothing more than a standard informational item you would find in any hotel room around the world. It is not a contract,” according to Parrish.
The main objective of the lawsuit is for the Court to uphold the initial contracts as valid. “It is imperative that objective is met. Without it, every timeshare owner in St. Maarten is in jeopardy. So in a sense, our group is not only representing the owners of Atrium Resort, but also of every timeshare owner on the island.”
The first court hearing scheduled for January 12 was for the sole purpose of having an injunction filed to prevent Festiva from disallowing owners who hadn’t paid the AMF above the CPI and the assessments the use of units. Prior to that hearing, Festiva sent a letter conceding that it would allow the use of the units until the case was settled.
All of the litigant owners are paying the 2006 AMF fees plus a CPI index of four per cent, as required by their previous contract, with a due date of January 15.
Festiva is making statements that previous management didn’t maintain the
Atrium and that almost everything has to be repaired or replaced. Parrish and her husband have been coming to the Atrium every year since 1999 and own three weeks in a one-bedroom apartment there. They have several friends in other units of
each type available (studio, one-bedroom, and two-bedroom apartments).
Parrish: “All of us agree that the units have been maintained and that management has always been quick to respond when an item needed repair.” The apartments and studios have been provided with new appliances, hurricane shutters, and new air conditioners since 2001, the owners state.
“While the cruise ships are big business for St. Maarten, so are the timeshare owners. If the courts in St. Maarten allow these developers/owners/managers to financially abuse the timeshare owners, they will eventually stop coming to the island. In the 1970s and 1980s, the timeshare industry had a lot of bad publicity
and consequently suffered a negative outlook. This will happen again if
these companies aren’t stopped,” Parrish wrote.
St Maarten vacation rental
