St. Maarten Private Eye

This island is so full and congested with people, cars, traffic, condos, potholes, why would anyone in their right mind recommend to someone to buy at Barbaron? This was a beautiful green area before Roberto Carchidi put his hands on it. Has anyone seen how they have cut into the hill and changed the natural landscape?
Has anyone seen that mangroves were cut recently? Residents on SXM are quite fed up with more developments like Barbaron, people like Carchidi that are smooth talkers. There was some talk about a botanical garden. Again nonsense. He destroys one of SXM prime green beautiful spots and thinks he can satisfy the public telling them he will build a botanocal garden for his condo owners and how does that help the local SXMners? I think it was a major mistake for Rudy Nuess to have done bussiness with this man. If Nuess had built upscale villas on the natural hillside, with ample greenery in between it would have been prime investment property.
All these Americans are doing now is flipping real estate, one big speculators market, not one of them have SXM at heart like the original investors that came years ago.
One of the biggest mistakes that SXM government made was to mass market SXM tourism, we have chased away the original American tourism that we previously had, people that came every year, people that kept in touch with the locals, or their favorite taxi driver, people that knew staff at the hotels by their name, people that came back every year and brought small gifts for local children.
I have spoken to many of the people that use to stay at Mullet Bay and private homes in the past, they hate going to Philipsburg, traffic and no parking, they hate going to Marigot for the same reason with the unsafe issue added in, they are afraid to drive around the island in a rental car as they will be robbed, hijacked. Many do still enjoy Orient Beach although it looks like crowded St.Tropez.
So another Barbaron, Indigo, and any new developments is not going down too well with residents and long time visitors, does Government stop and ask themselves what they are doing? do they have a plan for the island or for their own pockets only? they are solely responsible for the state of the island, they hand out permits and make deals with developers in exchange for permits.
They can also easily say, wait... this island has developed too fast and not in accordance with attracting upscale tourism, why don't we stop for a while and fix the infrastructure. Many shanty looking areas on SXM need to be demolished and rebuilt, Cole Bay and Simpson Bay need a major upgrading, the area resembles a shanty area no provisions made for parking, green area, Simpson bay lagoon views, cyclists, recreation areas or spaces. Previosly one of the most beautiful areas of SXM with blue lagoon views has turned into a over built urban area with no physical planning and zoning.
This government is not looking to turn things around, they will continue to allow people like Carchidi and others to come build and build and destroy the last piece of SXM and leave the mess up to someone in the future to fix.
By that time Carchidi and his partners in building crimes would be back in Italy enjoying their money. And the SXM people? so far the only green area left is the Emilio Wilson park given to the people by a genuine SXMner and one can easily see that every weekend it is booked with parties and fundraisers. During the week it is mini golfing and school visits, don't we need at this time more green and recreation spaces for our peace of mind?