Oct. 12–Pritam Singh, whose company is responsible for roughly $1 billion worth of Keys real estate development, is rumored to have found his latest project.

According to city of Marathon Planning Director George Garrett, Singh is under contract — along with secondary investors — to purchase Banana Bay Resort & Marina near mile marker 49.5 bayside.

According to the Monroe County Property Appraiser’s Office, Banana Bay is owned by OB Copperhead LLC from Lafayette, Fla., northwest of Gainesville, and was assessed in 2013 at $4.91 million. It’s a 10-acre parcel with 61 rooms, 34 boat slips and various amenities, including a pool and conference room.

“Pritam and his team came down and sat down in my office. They have an agreement to purchase and my understanding is it will [finalize] some time in November,” Garrett said.

Singh said he is “neither willing to confirm or deny” his involvement in purchasing Banana Bay. But Garrett said he was told that Singh’s team has designs on tearing down the existing hotel and doubling the number of rooms to 122.

Doubling Banana Bay’s size would take some doing, as hotel room allocations are not readily available in the city of Marathon. The state Department of Economic Opportunity oversees development here because the Keys are an Area of Critical State Concern.

Hotel units must be existing property rights or purchased and transferred to that property. They could also come from an available pool awarded by the state Cabinet in January.

The Cabinet allotted the city 100 new units, as well as the right to borrow forward 100 more from its 24 annual market-rate allocations. The City Council awarded the first 65 units last year to four properties, including Singh’s Tranquility Bay Resort in Marathon.

Garrett said Singh’s team is eyeing roughly 20 available units at a former Grassy Key mobile home park called Trailers by the Sea. It’s located near mile marker 58.

“They’re getting their own units over and above how many they’d ask for from us. I know they’ve put some money on units around town, presumably to put on there,” Garrett said.

During the housing boom of the late 1990s, Singh built Tranquility Bay, Indigo Reef and the Boat House in Marathon. He’s in the middle of building a 96-unit hotel in Key West, where he also developed Truman Annex and the Parrot Key Hotel and Resort.

In addition, he is rehabbing the former Oceanside Marina on Stock Island. He bought it from BB&T bank earlier this year for $5 million.