There’s a mini construction boom in Cahuita, a small village on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast about an hour south of Puerto Limón.  A portion of the road leading into Cahuita from the highway is being paved, Cahuita’s first shopping center is under construction and scheduled to open in October and a local man is building a gymnasium.

Safari White Sands Shopping Center will offer space for 10 businesses.  Owner Wayne Palmer Wallace, a local businessman, said he saw a need and decided to fill it.

“People were asking for buildings to rent and there is no place in the center of Cahuita,” Palmer said.  Palmer said he sees the venture as prosperous both for himself and for the community.  “I hope so because I’m investing a lot of money here,” he said.

Palmer owns the Safari Ferreteria hardware store, which includes a bicycle shop offering sales, rentals and repairs, Supermarket Safari and Cabinas Safari and Cabinas Safari Ocean View. He plans to move the current small ferreteria into a larger space in the shopping center in order to offer more variety.  The bicycle business will remain in the current location.

Palmer said he has already rented two additional spaces in the new shopping center.  One will be a dentist’s office and the other an entertainment arcade for kids.  A souvenir shop is a possibility for a third rental and he said there is talk about a bank moving into one of the spaces but added, “It’s up to the community if they want one.”  The closest bank to Cahuita is a Banco de Costa Rica in Puerto Viejo about 20 minutes south.

A small stretch of road from the shopping center to the center of town is currently being paved, a project of the Asociación Desarollo Cahuita and the Junta Administrativa y de Desarrollo Económico de la Vertiente Atlántica, a government agency that funds community projects.  Association president Rodolfo Enriques Pineda said the project will pave about 200 meters of road at the entrance to Cahuita from the highway to the center of town.  He expects the project to be completed in the next month at a cost of 35 million colons, about $68,000.

“Local and international people like this project because it means no contamination,” he said.  The association president is referring to a problem business owners have with dust and dirt from passing cars flying into their businesses.  He said the association plans to send a letter to the government requesting funds for 5,000 more meters of paving in 2007.  Currently, most roads in Cahuita are unpaved.

Lastly, Cahuita will have its first gymnasium when a project being constructed by local business owner Hernan Spencer is completed.  The building is located just northwest of the city park. Spencer said the second floor of the two-story building will have space for stationery bicycles and other cardiovascular exercise equipment.  An outdoor area for free weights, a small soda and a self-service laundromat will take up most of the first floor.   He is also building two small apartments at one end of the building.  Personal training and massage will also be offered at the gym, he said.

Spencer said his project is for the community.  “I wanted to do something especially for the kids, so they would have something to do,” he said.  In a twist, Spencer also said he will cook on Sundays for the “crackheads and junkies” as a way to help them “clean up their act for at least one day.”  “If you don’t help them and show them they have another option they will never find it,” he said.

Spencer expects the gym to be open in the next month or two.