CONTINUING TO SEE THE “VISION” THROUGH THE CHAOS

It’s almost December 25th and before we sign off for the holiday season we thought we would update you on progress to Date.

Thanks to our amazing builders KVANAR lead by Chris Haggie and Randy Howell, the build is moving along on (or slightly ahead of) schedule. Despite the best efforts of our team, it is definitely at the “ugly” stage with (check out the gallery for some updated images) – mounds of fill, trenching everywhere and building materials littering the site. The construction process here in Turks and Caicos involves the extensive use of base construction materials – concrete block, steel rebar, plywood forming and lots of poured concrete, none of which is easy on the eye. The benefit of this construction technique is that with each new concrete “pour”, significant steps can be immediately seen because blockwork walls can be quickly assembled on the structural slabs and each new storey seems to take shape within a few days. On December 17th we completed the second floor slab and ring beam for the guesthouses and one half of the pool was poured last week. The design of each of the villas at the Dunes necessitates many such staged concrete pours and the multi-pod concept linked through the central pool “oasis” is still difficult to envisage for the uninitiated. But as developers, we see it quite clearly coming together and we are confident that the brilliance of the SWA design will begin to shine through in the coming months. Reaction of all of our visitors to the site has been incredibly positive, but there is a sense that for some, our vision is not entirely clear. All are very impressed by the progress and the location, especially the views over Smiths Reef, Grace Bay and Babalua Beach from the second floor (or our viewing platform), which are simply second to none and will be a major selling feature. It is however still difficult for most to piece together the entrance and the flow from the gate on Coconut Beach Road through to the beach. In order to help alleviate this, we are preparing another rendering that will show the gate, the common gym and service building as well as the driveways that lead to each of the villas. This will appear on our site shortly. One last comment on the build – it truly is organized “chaos” in the sense that the work that needs to go into making sure all of the elements are in place as planned has been a joint effort between all of our consultants, our contractor and ourselves. We are determined to eliminate as many change orders and retrofits as possible in an effort firstly to keep the costs in line with budget and secondly to eliminate as much of the “jackhammering” and de-construction that seems to go on with most developments. This has meant that we have been trying to stay one step ahead of the actual construction and making relatively small “tweaks” (and some bigger ones) on the fly. As developers it only reinforces our belief that it is very important that we are on Island for each stage of the build.