Returning home had never been the problem. Finding the right environment to move the vision from possibility to reality was.

For Wendy Peters, the president of JWP Corp., a certified minority- and woman-owned construction company based in the New York metropolitan area, the idea had existed since 2018, when she and her husband, Joseph, purchased property in Grand Anse with plans to develop it. But like many investment dreams, the plans slowed as circumstances changed. 

After more than three decades in New York’s banking industry—starting as a bank teller and rising to branch manager— Peters brought the same discipline, relationship-building skills, and financial understanding into building JWP Corp. with her husband. Formed in 2006, the company handles not just private but complex, large-scale public works .

“I have not been the most patriotic of the Grenadian diaspora because I had been disillusioned by Grenadian politics,” Mrs. Peters admitted.

“When we bought the property, we wanted to develop it into a vacation rental which could serve as a place for us when we come to the island,” she explained, adding, “My vision was also to create a Foundation so that we can use the profits to help people put a toilet inside every home.

“And,I also have a passion for youth. Once I was visiting the island and I saw a young boy who was lying on the bridge looking up, and I felt a kind of hopelessness, thinking that child should have been in school at that time. I want to help there,” she said with a sense of purpose.

“But COVID-19 came, and that took a back seat because businesses were hit hard and we were just focusing on surviving,” Mrs. Peters recalled.

Then came the trigger to move forward with the valuable Grand Anse property that had remained idle since 2018. An experience that would change the way she viewed what was possible. 

“Recently I started following the Prime Minister of Grenada, and I saw an advertisement for the Diaspora Homecoming. Before that, I was slowly drawn to his vision because the little that I knew about it was in line with what I wanted to accomplish with the Foundation I will set up once the hotel is built.

“And then I said, ‘You know what, I will go to get information because I need to know what options we have available. You hear so many different stories about the banks not lending and all of that. Knowing what we want to do is going to take a lot of money, I began to think outside the box about getting an investor,’” she told Caribbean Pulse.

The turning point came not from a presentation or a promise, but from seeing what was already being built. During the island tour organized as part of the Grenada Diaspora Homecoming, Peters visited projects that showed her the scale of what could be achieved when there was a coming together of vision, expertise, and investment.

At Six Senses, a five-star luxury wellness resort in La Sagesse that opened two years ago, she saw a connection between someone else’s success and her own unfinished idea.

“These are the people who developed this beautiful hotel,” she recalled. “This is part of what you want to do, I said to myself”.

“We had already started on a good note when we visited the Polaris Hospital project because the healthcare system was one of the things that was always concerning to me. And so I was impressed by that.

“But when we went to Six Senses, there and then it clicked,” she continued, explaining, “these are the people who developed this beautiful hotel. Hospitality is part of what I want to do, and I took the opportunity to introduce myself to Siobhan Lloyd, the legal consultant, and Kamal Shehada, and it just opened up my eyes,” Mrs. Peters recalled with optimism in her tone.

“That was one of the things on my list: to meet a developer, if only just to talk. So, the very first day I said, ‘You know what, I am so glad that I came,” she noted as her eyes lit up like a child.

It had only just begun to unfold at that time, as, in hindsight, the Diaspora Homecoming event was planned in such a way as to carry the message that Grenada was finally ready to meet her halfway.

When Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell outlined his Vision 75 on the opening day of the forum, there was a further uptick in her enthusiasm.

“I am telling you, if this guy gets to do a quarter of what he says he’s going to do, then Grenada is going to be in such a good place because he’s not thinking small; he is thinking like the bigger countries, right?” the accomplished businesswoman and former banker stated.

“I was just impressed with his vision. He touched on everything from renewable energy and agriculture to education, even when he spoke about planning around the hydrocarbons available in the maritime space,” she said.

When asked to sum up the Prime Minister in one sentence, she had even fewer words.

“Forward-thinking,” she said. “He is ahead on a lot of things.”

And then came the networking.

“I made contact with the Grenada Investment Development Corporation (GIDC), the Ministry of Finance, The Grenada Co-operative Bank Limited, Inland Revenue, and an attorney—everybody I knew that I would need to help me with this project in particular.

“I got information that I didn’t know about Citizenship by Investment (CBI). I had that concept in my head where people just come in to buy passports. But that’s not how it is,” she confessed.

“The goal for the whole programme, I now understand, is to help develop Grenada, and in return you get your citizenship. It does not just help those people who are investing; it helps the local people as well.

“For example, I have a local project, and they can help me by investing in my project. They get citizenship, I get to build my project and employ people to create jobs, which is good for the economy,” she said, simplifying the process.

More importantly, hearing from Grenadians living abroad who have successfully invested after clearing hurdles and shared their stories at the forum, Mrs. Peters is not deterred by the bureaucracy ahead.

“If you can work for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the amount of paperwork they have means you could manage any kind of bureaucracy and project. So I’m not afraid of the paper. They just need to tell me what I need to do.”

On that note, she declared:

“I’m going to work on the business plan to start. I have a business plan for the business in New York, but this particular site is different. My plan is to work with GIDC so that they can help guide me to get the plan and then start working with them and with the bank. There is also an incentive from the Investment Migration Agency (IMA), which has drastically reduced the fees, making it more affordable for people like me and Grenadians who live here to participate.

 “I also spoke with Mark Scott from Tandem, one of the panellists at the forum, who is a Marketing Agent for the CBI program, and his company helps people who are interested in investing in Grenada. 

“So this was a successful trip. I made contact with everybody I knew that would need to help me with this project in particular,” Mrs. Peters said.

“I have emails and I have phone numbers. I have business cards. I have names.”

For the first time since purchasing the Grand Anse property in 2018, Wendy Peters left Grenada believing she knew not only what she wanted to build, but also who could help her build it.