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This article was written by Robert Milburn.

An occasional blast of extravagance could indicate that the worst of the global slump is over and a more normal level of risk-tolerance and silliness is returning. No one sane wants the return of that self-indulgent decadence that signaled the dying days of the 1990s, or even the gorging of 2007, but after five austere years of bunker-hunkering, an occasional burst of exuberance is welcome – and probably a sign that the world is back, spinning normally on its axis.

That's what we were thinking when we got wind of The Baha Mar Casino & Hotel's "topping-off" ceremony yesterday down in the Bahamas, a good-luck building ritual signifying the "roof," or in this case the highest floor, has been completed on the 1,000-acre, $3.5 billion resort project called Baha Mar.

Sounds like a hell of a bash: the guests, including the Bahamian prime minister and chief justice, tore through 300 pounds of truffles and a special designed drink, the Baha Mar Blue, made with rum, blue curacao, pineapple juice and vodka. A painting by five Bahamian artists was hoisted to the hotel's 25 floor.

The hootenanny continued on the resort's grounds with hard hats bobbing and headdresses flailing to a 50-man Junkanoo street parade. That's a traditional masquerade, normally held on New Year's Day, when Bahamian men in eye-catching costumes beat goatskin drums and wail on horns. The Bahamas National Youth Choir then took to the stage to belt out the Bahamian national anthem, followed by Lenny Kravitz, the rock-and-roll artist. A firework-lit sky was choreographed to Kravitz' 1998 hit tune, "Fly Away."

Baha Mar

Lenny Kravitz? The U.S.-born Kravitz has a home on Eleuthera, an island of the Bahamas, which is also his mother's birthplace. His firm, Kravitz Design, will design the interiors of the Baha Mar Casino & Hotel Ultar Villa and the resort's Signature Nightclub. "This is the first commercial project my firm Kravitz Design has been involved with in the Bahamas," he tells Penta. "It has great meaning to me as I spent a good deal of my childhood in the Bahamas and today, I still have a house and recording studio there."

Robert Sands, a Baha Mar senior vice president, tells us this $3.5 billion resort project, half-way to completion and scheduled to open December 2014, "is the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere and we see it as an international accomplishment which is not regional in scope." Seventy percent of the project's financing came from the Export-Import Bank of China, but the driving force behind the project is Baha Mar's chairman and CEO, Sarkis Izmirlian, a Bahamian said to have been raised in Switzerland.

We suspect some marketing fluff in this claim it's the "largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere," but we'll concede it's pretty ambitious. The resort's four hotels and 2,200 rooms, some to be run by Grand Hyatt and Mondrian, will be festooned with artwork curated by The National Art Gallery of The Bahamas. The surrounding gardens will be filled with native Bahamian flowers and trees, as well as luxury shopping, an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course, thirty-plus restaurants, the largest casino in the Caribbean, ocean-view spas, and a 200,000 square-foot convention center. A fifteen-minute boat ride will take guests to the resort's private island, which can be booked for everything from fully catered affairs to lazy afternoon picnics.

Three hundred of the resort's rooms are available for purchase, with 20% currently sold. Prices range from $1.2 million to $12 million, the upper range for a four-bedroom beachfront villa. Part of the selling pitch: rental income can be coupled with the fact there is no local capital gains tax at resale, providing buyers a pretty good deal.

Now we get Lenny Kravitz's involvement. The chorus of his 1998 hit, "Fly Away," is, "I want to get away. I want to fly away." That's not a bad pitch for a nervy $3.5 billion dollar development in Nassau, Bahamas.