Limegrove Still Not Quite Ready For Primetime

If you were hoping to shop Limegrove this Christmas for that special luxury item for that special someone, you may be a little disappointed with the official opening of the much ballyhooed Limegrove Lifestyle Center in Holetown.  Not only were Louis Vutton, Hermes, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Armani and other high-end stores completely missing, but of the only two stores ready for the big opening day, one – Hallmark – is so ubiquitous that most discerning shoppers would consider it a no-name brand.  One couldn’t help wondering whether they were forced to open their doors in the still largely incomplete mall just to get rid of their stock of seasonal Christmas cards.
 
Limegrove is a work in progress, and that’s putting it mildly.  It’s more like an active construction site than somewhere you would want to shop.  Intrepid early adopter shoppers should be warned to leave their high heels at home and not to forget their hard hats.  Oh, and they should also bone-up and their dump truck-dodging skills.  I don’t know what’s the rush to open this unfinished product now when clearly it will miss both the Christmas shopping season and the entire key 2010-2011 winter tourist season.  Opening it now, if one can call it an "opening," only serves to remind everyone that Limegrove, like much of the tourism-related development on the west coast, is still in the throes of the deepest international financial recession since the Great Depression.

This recession has devastated tourism development up and down the west coast – projects upon which Limegrove was banking.  After celebrating (in the media) finally paying off its creditors last month, government is today admitting that they really have no firm date for the restart of the Four Seasons hotel and villa project.  Banyan Tree/Black Bess is looking for a buyer, St. Peter’s Bay reportedly has only sold two of its fifty-seven condos (to principals of the company), and Portico and others stand empty.  And, despite the Government of Barbados’ upbeat predictions and pronouncements the future remains bleak.  I mean, just who do they think they are fooling when the shots are really being called in Washington and even there - Feds Chairman Ben Bernanke, like the weather-forecasting ground hog, is predicting five more months years of winter recession.

We certainly wish Limegrove and it’s visionary developer, Paul Altman, all the best in these tough economic times.  If he is still holding on to it when the storm is over, he/we should have an excellent product on par with any of the high-end shopping centers we have seen in North America.  We loved the water feature and the gas lamps.  It’s position in the heart of Holetown across from First and Second Streets cements the area as the leader in tourism entertainment and shopping in Barbados and much of the Caribbean.  There still remains some concerns about flooding in Holetown (in spite of Mr. Altman’s boasting otherwise) and the wider ecological damage to the mangrove upon which it is built and what that portends for the future, but like most the rest of the world, I suppose we are leaving those headaches for future generations.  Right now the spotlight is on Limegrove’s coming out “party.”

We ran into Paul last night showing his wife around his latest dream coming to fruition, and he reminded us that he started out bagging groceries at Elmer’s Supermarket in Speightstown.  Well, Elmer Jordan is in the crypt underneath St. Peter’s Parish Church and a generation has grown up since his supermarket closed its doors.  The lesson for us all and Limegrove is that there is always a fine line between the crypt and success.

Click here for a few shots we took of Limegrove last night.

Click here to read some of our earlier posts on Limegrove.

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Limegrove Wins Marketing Awards

"Limegrove, Barbados’ first mixed use lifestyle centre, (under construction) has captured two online marketing ADDY Awards. The 2009 Caribbean Advertising Federation judging was recently held in St. Thomas, U.S.Virgin Islands to recognize creative excellence from the Caribbean region. Limegrove.com and the Limegrove electronic sales kit both brought home silver awards from the increasingly competitive interactive categories in which they competed.

Launched in December 2008, limegrove.com designed and developed by Virgo Communications, Inc., provides users information on the Limegrove Lifestyle Centre which will offer patrons a merge of retail mixed with luxury living. The dual functionality of the site allows users the opportunity to explore what will be available at the Limegrove Lifestyle Centre as well as The Grove Residences...."

Click here for entire article.

Holetown To Get Its Long Awaited High-end Retail Concourse

Shopping mall? Perish the thought! Last week ground was finally officially broken in Holetown for the $150 M high-end Limegrove Lifestyle Centre. Developers were at pains to point out that Limegrove will not be just another shopping mall. The project which has been bandied about for the last several years is to finally come on stream as a hip residential development with trendy brand name shops like Louis Vutton, Hermes, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Armani and Cartier. In other words, when completed in two years Limegrove’s 100,000 sq. ft. retail component will look more like The Shops at Bal Habour just north of Miami or the really high-end shopping areas of the themed luxury resorts of Las Vegas or the upscale shopping centers in or near some large cities across the USA.

The price of one of the 60 condos and penthouses planned for the 10-acre development will be a number with at least two commas and denominated in US currency, of course. Ronald Tree probably never dreamed when he completed Sandy Lane in the early 1960s that a little 3000 sq. ft. apartment next to a salt pond in Holetown would fetch that much, but that was before the Gold Coast became the Platinum Coast. Along with the gold and platinum there is the greed that is causing ugly family rows as locals scramble to sell lands that have been in their families for generations in order to cash -in on the frenzy created by the rash of new beachfront and inland developments popping up everywhere on the west coast.

Last week a huge track was cleared in Weston, St. James across from the St. Albans Primary School and it is rumored that condos are also on the cards for that lot. Already opened next door in the watercouse near the spot where local calypsonian The Great Carew and his chattel house were swept out to sea a dozen years ago there now stands a new beachfront apartment complex eerily called - “Beyond the Reef.” Limegrove is on the banks of the area’s largest watercourse and is taking no chances; it is spending a million dollars upfront on the necessary engineering to ensure that it is not a victim of Holetown’s notorious flooding.

Meanwhile, further up the coast another resort laying next to a watercourse is about to expand. Cobblers Cove Hotel has purchased the property to its south (not the watercourse side) and will be building on it, although we do not know yet exactly what. It is important to note that Cobblers Cove - or “Camelot” as the original castle-like mansion built on an old Cholera graveyard was called - was one of the first resorts built that has turned the once dead or sleepy west coast of Barbados into what it is today. It was built in 1943 as a weekend retreat for the local wealthy east coast sugar planter and politician - Josh Haynes. He came for the calm waters as a get-away from the rough seas of the east coast. With projects like Limegrove and the continuing condoization of the West Coast a new generation - now mostly foreign - is giving new meaning to the concept of ‘making bread on the dead.’

Jentillia

Limegrove's Soft Opening

The Bank Building at Limegrove, Holetown

The Limegrove Lifestyle Centre currently taking shape in Holetown not so quietly opened The Bank Building last week, one of the twelve commercial buildings making up the complex slated for completion by the end of this year. This happened with the move of the Holetown branch of the Barbados National Bank from it's temporary location in the wooden chattel house fronting the main road to the newly completed "The Bank Building" located on Seaview which connects Hwy 1 to Hwy 2A via Lascelles. The chattel house is currently being dismantled and removed for construction to start on "The Louis Vuitton Building" which will house among others, as the name suggests, a store bearing the name of the international luxury French fashion house specializing in trunks, leather goods, ready-to-wear, shoes, watches, jewelery, accessories, sunglasses, and books.

This branch of the BNB (Barbados National Bank) has developed quite a reputation on the west coast and indeed Barbados also for it's upscale banking with it's emphasis on personal service and detail geared to the clientele to which it appeals on the upmarket Platinum Coast. With a lot more space in what Limegrove bills as "one of the most impressive bank buildings in Barbados" they can now take these services to new levels. Certainly, some might also add - fortunately or unfortunately, with the opening of the new branch at Limegrove the BNB, now majority owned by the Republic Bank of Trinidad & Tobago, has come a long, long way from its days in the back of the Post Office as the Government Savings Bank catering to the banking needs of sugar cane cutters, house maids and fishermen.

Chattel House former home of BNB Holetown being dismantled 03/31/10

Limegrove Comes Under Heavy Environmental And Ecological Criticism

Limegrove under construction on the mangrove swamp in Holetown

(Click here for larger image)

Limegrove, the upmarket shopping, entertainment and residential development in the heart of Holetown has come under heavy environmental and ecological criticism from a professor of Marine Ecology and Fisheries at the local branch of the University of The West Indies. Professor Hazel Oxenford described Limegrove and another big tourism development in the works for another mangrove swamp site on the south coast of the island as having "the potential to devastate Barbados' already struggling coral reef population." She explained that mangroves protect coral reefs by holding back,slowing down and absorbing rainfall runoff which unchecked destroys coral reefs and animal life which live on them.

She did not mince words when she zeroed in on Limegrove: "You see in Holetown right now that ridiculous building complex which is going up right in the swamp. What is it going to do? They are turning [the swamp] into concrete to make the water run off fast, really fast water takes with it soil, garbage, anything. Say 'no' to that kind of building."

In the above photosynth you can see on the landside of the bridge where they have built a new concrete canal to channel the water through the swamp area. Recently in the local media the developer was boasting that with the new canals together with the new catchment pond miles inland at Farmers in St. Thomas built to facilitate irrigation of the new golf course at Apes Hill, they have finally solved the flooding problem in Holetown. Professor Oxenford and others believe such thinking is shortsighted, for with the reefs gone the coastline is more exposed to storms and erosion. And, with the beaches gone, so will the tourists, supposedly for whom these monstrosities are being conceived.

Click here to read original Barbados Today article.

Click here for more context to the mangrove swamp in Holetown.

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The Face Of Holetown Is Changing

Construction photo 05/11/09  Click image to enlarge Artist rendering of Limegrove Lifestyle Center Click image to enlarge  Contruction workers adding decorative details to one of the buildings at Limegrove Lifestyle Center 05/11/09 Click image to enlarge

With the recession biting on the West Coast shuttering almost all the major tourism related construction projects, it surely must be reassuring to the public to see hard hats and cranes in action on the massive upscale mall under construction along the main road in Holetown.  When completed the multi-building shopping, entertainment and office complex will boast some of the leading top-of-line luxury boutiques in the world including: Armani, Hugo Boss, Breitling, Bulgari, Dior, Diane von Furstenberg, Gucci, and many others in its tenant line-up.  If this project survives the current recession it will change the face of shopping on the west coast of Barbados.  Also, associated with the project is the building of scores of condos aimed at the high-end market.

However, not all of the construction activity in and around Holetown is centered along Route 1, another “route” is taking shape along the beach variously dubbed “The West Coast” or “Holetown” Boardwalk.  Similar in concept to the popular boardwalk in the Rockley/Hastings area on the south coast, when completed it should provide continuous waterfront access along the beaches in Holetown from Discovery Bay to Beachlands.  It also involves widening some beaches and fortifying revetments.

West Coast Boardwalk Construction photo 05/11/09 
Click image to enlarge

More on Limegrove see www.limegrove.com
More on Holetown Boardwalk see www.coastal.gov.bb/pageselect.cfm?page=75

Limegrove Lifestyle Centre Update

Barbados TravelAdvisor • View topic - Limegrove Lifestyle Centre Holetown

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Venture capital fund to open doors in Barbados - Caribbean360

"The Barbados Entrepreneurs' Venture Capital Fund will have a presence on the west coast of the island.

Set up a year ago to stimulate economic growth, one successful enterprise after another, the entrepreneurship development organization, better known as Bimventures, has been allocated space at the high end Limegrove Lifestyle Centre in Holetown in the St. James parish. Limegrove is a mixed use lifestyle centre which opens at year-end..."

Read more: Venture capital fund to open doors in Barbados - Caribbean360