The dry season has allowed us to complete all structural activities and progress onto weatherproofing the facade and internal finishes. As you can see in the pictures we’ve poured the last slabs necessary to ‘top out’ both Building 1 and Building 2 with the pool structure also completed. Internal and external services are making rapid progress and most importantly so are the windows which finally provide a weatherproof envelope. This in turn allows all the internal finishing trades including floors, drywall, kitchens/bathrooms etc to commence.
The wider site is also taking shape making room for the amenities area and completion of the (massive) pool. Earthworks for the commencement of Building 3 and 4 have been completed to avoid large earthmoving machinery working in the immediate area once the first stage is handed over to our clients. The beach is looking fantastic and all the team at Bala Beach Resort is looking forward to maintaining steady progress through to completion of Stage 1.
We had a very busy 2009 at Bala Beach Resort, especially on the construction front. We pushed hard through Christmas and the New Year when the weather Gods finally allowed us some uninterrupted progress. This time has made it so that we should see all structure activities complete for both buildings before the end of February.
The exterior of both buildings is now progressing nicely as we commence work on all of the interior finishes. Work on external amenities, including the pools has commenced and is scheduled to be completed by June. The work site is a hive of activity, with any given day seeing in excess of 200 workers, many from the local community, working hard to finish Stage 1 before the end of 2010.
We’ve had a number of clients holidaying in Panama come to site for a closer look at our ongoing progress. After a quick tour, most of their time was spent enjoying the beach!
We’ll be in touch again soon for another Bala Beach Resort construction update. If you have any questions or comments, please always feel free to Contact Us.
Panama-Colon Highway Opens!
May 3 2009
Posted by admin 
in Investing in Bala Beach, Life at Bala Beach, Panama Paradise, Portobelo, Colon Province
Just three days before today’s elections to choose the newpresident for the governing period of 2009-2014, the current President of the Republic of Panama, Martin Torrijos, opened the long awaited Panama – Colon Highway. The path, however, is not yet fully finished and is reported to be formally inaugurated sometime in the middle of next month.
Torrijos declared that the new thoroughfare was open after taking a tour from Quebrada Lopez, in Limon county, Colon province, up to Madden, in Chillibre county, Panama province.
He assured that the road is now ready for use and added that the only thing it lacks before it’s complete are just a few “details.”
In his speech Torrijos said that the new highway will benefit residents of the Colon province and entrepreneurs who travel daily to the Free Zone. He announced that the path will be free for the following month and that the government has not yet defined the price of the new toll.
The highway is being built by a Brazilian Consortium named Norberto Odebrecht with an initial price of $215,859,446 dollars. However, the MOP (Public Works Ministry) said that as a result of certain “geological events” that were not detailed, the cost of the project incremented to $266.7 million.
The work includes 35 km of new construction and another 7km of rehabilitation of existing road and the construction of bridges, automobiles paths and pedestrian steps.
Now open, the Panama-Colon Highway significantly reduces travel time between Panama City and Colon and the Caribbean Coast. Traffic and poor road conditions would sometimes cause the journey to take as long as two hours or more, even though the actual distance was less than 100km. Now, following the opening of the new highway last week, you can travel the entire way over a modern four lane highway that reduces travel time to less than an hour. With the addition of the newly opened Panama-Colon highway, the beautiful Caribbean Coast of Panama is now much more accessible to everyone!
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