Wife of Ex-Domino’s Pizza CEO loses battle to build St. Barts hotel

The wife of an ex-Domino’s Pizza CEO has been ordered to halt construction of a massive hotel in St. Barts after a local environmental group raised hackles over the project, On The Money has learned.

Denise Dupré — whose husband is the billionaire private-equity mogul Mark Nunnelly, who headed Domino’s for six years beginning in 1998 — was looking to spend $170 million to replace a now-destroyed hotel on the posh island resort’s exclusive Bay of Saint Jean, as The Post reported this month.

Plans for her company, SAS Saint Jean Beach Real Estate, included building a football field-sized, cement underground garage under St. Jean Beach for the new Hotel Etoile.

But critics said the project would irreversibly damage the bay. On Dec. 23, The St. Barthelemy Administrative Court canceled the project’s building permit, originally granted in December 2019 and modified in June, without commenting further, court documents show.

That means Dupré would need to start the entire process over from scratch if she wants to resurrect the project.

St. Barth Essentiel, a nonprofit environmental group that’s backed by some of the biggest homeowners on the island, said in recent weeks that experts believed there was a risk of the disappearance of St.-Jean Beach if construction continued, according to court documents.

“We applaud the decision of the court to revoke Hotel Etoile’s building permit. We hope that this sends a clear message to all who seek to build properties on our island that the environment must come first for the sake of all who reside here,” said St. Barth Essentiel President Hélène Bernier in a statement to The Post.

Dupré’s SAS Saint-Jean didn’t return calls through the Paul McCoy Family Office, which is listed as its owner in SAS legal papers.