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Recent days have seen the supreme court of the State of Quintana Roo (which includes Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Tulum, among other expat communities) order Cancun’s municipal government (officially called “Benito Juarez”) to issue the building permit for Dragon Mart Cancun.

Dragon Mart Cancun is a massive commercial project which will act as something like a forum for tourism real estate in Cancun and the Riviera Maya (Playa del Carmen, etc.)

From what I have seen in the news, there seem to be both downsides and upsides to this approval.

The Downside

The downside is that the state court has overridden concerns from both the municipal government and community groups. The main concerns seem to be that the plan has not yet demonstrated that it conforms to environmental standards, and that it may favor foreign employment rather than hiring and creating jobs for the local population.

The project has changed its focus several times, apparently trying to find an industry that would be more appealing to the local population, starting off as a forum for Chinese products, then international products, and now tourism real estate.

The Upside

Dragon Mart itself claims that the project will generate over 8500 jobs for local workers, both directly and indirectly.

The ruling also shows Mexico’s ongoing commitment to drawing foreign investment and make these investments as easy to implement as possible.

So, is this a case of the government being too eager to draw large-scale foreign investment, at the cost of the environment and local business, or is it a case of special interest groups over-reacting to a project that will bring a solid economic boost to the area?

At the moment, I don’t have enough information to make such a call, but I guess now that it’s approved, we’ll be seeing the outcome …

There aren’t many articles in English, but here’s one which is a month old, so it doesn’t have the most recent developments.

-by Thomas Lloyd