The man who promised to turn a derelict seafront hotel into a mini-Hawaiian village resort and transform Sai Kung into a resort to rival Phuket is, as usual, thinking big when he explains why things haven't happened quite as quickly as he had hoped.
'Rome wasn't built in a day,' offers Brad Gotfried, the 46-year-old former garment industry executive who three years ago bought property worth $247 million at depressed 2003 Sars prices and then outlined a grand and almost fantastical vision of how his company, Urban Entertainment, would change the face of Sai Kung.
Back then, shortly after Mr Gotfried moved back to Hong Kong after 20 years in Florida, the limits of his ambition knew no bounds. The Beach Resort Hotel, empty for three years and snapped up by Urban Entertainment for $28 million, was to be turned into 'a miniature Hawaiian village' called the Honolulu Hotel with 'a nightly traditional Hawaiian luau party featuring a pig on the spit and Hawaiian dancers'.
The Star Plaza shopping centre, bought for $150 million, was to be the base for a fleet of ecologically friendly electric buses and vehicles which would whisk people to one of 13 themed villages, including a Mediterranean village, a Caribbean village, a Moroccan village and a dog lover's hotel and restaurant resort.
In blueprints the Hong Kong-born Australian prepared for potential fellow investors and the Hong Kong government, covering land and property his company did not yet own, he even outlined his hopes of seeing a safari park next to High Island Reservoir, offering visitors 'an up-close and personal encounter with wild animals by jeep'.
Sai Kung would become a tourist mecca with exotic dining spots including a Chinese restaurant called Mao's and an African game restaurant called Mandela's serving crocodile and emu and a themed tea house called Sai Kung Suzie's Feng Shui House.