Tuesday, September 15, 2009

It doesn’t hurt to be ambitious

When you are one of the smallest towns in the Bajo Segura you must look to others and envy them. More houses, means more people and more people equals more money to spend.

Jacarilla, is ambitious – it wants to grown in size to rival other neighbouring towns. The town council have therefore set out a plan for 1,226 houses to be built on 764,524 square metres of land. They have even given the development the name "Las Vegas" and have put the work out for tender. To make the contract attractive, the council only ask for a guarantee of 266,054 Euros, a tiny franction of the estimated 13 million Euros the project will cost to complete.

We have seen PGOUs that include commercial centres, hotel complexes etc from several towns in the area. Possibly the most ambitious are the plans for development in San Miguel. Jacarilla stipulates that, whoever takes this contract, completes the work in a maximum of four years. In the boom years that would have been normal but now – I am not so sure. There are apparently signs that the market is beginning to pick up but there still a lot of completed and part completed houses on the market. It could well take more than four years before there is a need for over 1,200 more new houses in this area – a quick visit to Sector D6 in Bigastro is clear evidence of this.

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