WILLEMSTAD – Residents living near The View Resort & Marina in Zakitó are returning to court on Tuesday in another attempt to halt construction on five buildings while the legality of changes made to the project remains under dispute.
Residents represented by Save Zakitó are asking the Court of First Instance for an interim injunction covering buildings 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8. They want construction suspended until they can determine exactly what has been authorized under recently issued building permits.
The dispute follows a ruling in July in which the Court established that construction on the five buildings had deviated from the approved building plans. At the time, no applications had been submitted to legalize those deviations.
As a result, the Court ruled that the minister could not simply reject the residents' request for enforcement and ordered the government to make a new decision.
That ruling was reinforced several days later when the Court gave the minister two months to reconsider the enforcement requests involving the five buildings.
Building 2 was treated differently because the Court determined that there was already a concrete prospect at the time that deviations involving that building could be legalized.
The situation has since changed.
According to Save Zakitó, the government has now issued new permits for the development, including permit 502/2026 covering modifications to the project. A separate new permit is also said to have been issued for building 2.
The residents argue, however, that simply issuing new permits does not resolve the dispute. They want to establish precisely which previously unauthorized construction changes have now been approved.
Save Zakitó is asking for a building-by-building comparison of the original permits, originally approved drawings, newly approved plans and what has actually been constructed.
The organization says such a comparison is necessary to establish whether the deviations identified by the Court in July have actually been legalized and, if so, to what extent.
Residents also argue that crucial documents are still missing.
The minister submitted additional documents to the Court on September 18. According to Save Zakitó, those materials include information concerning fire safety, explosion risks, prevailing wind direction and sightlines.
However, the organization says the original and revised construction drawings and structural calculations needed to independently assess the new permits were not included. A Health, Environment and Nature Ministry opinion referred to in the documentation is also allegedly missing.
Construction drawings were already a major issue during the previous proceedings. The government argued at the time that structural drawings had been approved after the original building permit was issued and that construction had proceeded according to those plans.
The Court found that argument insufficient because the drawings themselves had not been formally included in the permit and were not before the Court, making it impossible to verify whether they had actually been approved.
Save Zakitó is now asking the Court to prevent further work on the five disputed buildings while residents examine the new permits and their supporting documentation.
The residents say allowing construction to continue before that review is completed could further complicate a dispute over structures that the Court previously found had already departed from their authorized plans.