Altman: Limegrove Will Not be Just Another Mall – Barbados Today - April 23, 2010

The Limegrove Lifestyle Centre in Holetown, St, James, which has already cost investors over $100 million, will be open for Christmas. And when it does, apart from high end shopping, it will be a hub for fashion and the art on the island.

Speaking after a tour of the complex by Prime Minister David Thompson, real estate giant and project developer, Paul Altman, assured that 80 per cent of the complex.... Stressing that Limegrove was "not another mall", but a "lifestyle experience", Altman said it would be home to two cinemas, a roof-top night club, several bars and restaurants, three courtyards, a covered parking garage for over 350 vehicles and world famous retailers like Armani, Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton and hopefully Tiffany’s.

"We have a function planner for those three courtyards, which will bring into play music and fashion. We would like this to be the fashion capital of Barbados. We spoke with government ... and we think the opportunity to push fashion is there. We want film festivals. And we are going to give the Fashion Alliance the base here as part of what we see as reaching out to those other elements in Barbados," said Altman. Referring to the positive impact on the economy as "endless" Altman said he is hoping to see something happening in the courtyards every night of the year. On the residential side of Limegrove, eight of the $1.3 mill town houses have already been completed.

"Eight out of 57 town houses and condominiums are completed and the others indeed will follow on after these eight because we believe that the type of vitality that will come out of the commercial centre will force this to follow on, so we are looking forward to that," he said, adding that the project had occupied his every waking moment for the last two years. He assured that Limegrove was not a shot in the dark with the hope of success but a project that had been thought out. He added that flooding in Holetown might be a thing of the past.

"I can’t speak in terms of the higher being as it relates to floods, but we took the water course and we have expanded it by eight times. It has eight times the capacity, it had before and we have built drainage on both sides of the property and we have raised the land. We did that when we first got here. "This is two years later, we have had two rainy seasons and we have not experienced flooding; not only at Limegrove but in Holetown," he said. He also pointed out that other developments upstream like Apes Hill had catchment areas that had taken away much of the water which usually flowed into the area. "We did a study of the gullies and all that sort of thing. This wasn’t done by guess — there was a lot of thought put into this thing by people who know a lot more than me," he concluded. (DB)