The Petite Savanne resettlement community which will be located on 49.6 acres of land on Alford Estate at Bellevue Chopin has been designed to suit Dominica’s climate and terrain.
GIS spoke with the company contracted to execute the project, Montreal Management Consultant Establishment, MMCE on December 8th at Bellevue Chopin.
Project Manager, Christopher Timmins, assured that the designs of the structures were done taking into account the terrain and climate of the island.
“We’re using completely reinforced concrete...the unit should last 200 years, they’ve got very long lives and reinforced concrete is a well-proven material...the units we’ve designed are very modern in appearance and we believe that they provide a very good standard accommodation for the people who will live in them,” he explained.
The initial design of the community was carried out by architects in Dubai. The team designed 315 residential units; a commercial centre which will consist of 15 shop units on the lower floor and 13 offices on the upper floor; a two-storey community centre which will house an open-plan downstairs and a resource centre and offices upstairs.
The designs also include a farmers market, a new playing field and a new-purpose design basketball court.
“We are at the point where we have now completed the design work; we have appointed two local contractors: one to carry out the roads and the heavy civil engineering work... [and the other] who is going to do the community facilities down on the old playing field site. We are [also] signing a contract this week with an international contractor to come and actually build the housing units themselves.”
There will be a mixture of two, three and four bedroom dwellings. These will be broken down into two and three bedroom condominiums and three and four bedroom townhouses. The three bedroom townhouses will be duplex, triplex or quadruplex blocks. The four bedroom condominiums will be single units or built in pairs.
Work on the site began on November 29th with 30 local employees. Timmins told GIS that work started with the site-stripping. He stated that the next step will be the forming of the layouts for the new roads on site.
Over the course of the two-year construction, up to 800 workers will be employed. Timmins indicated that over 50% of these workers will be local.
“Presently we have about thirty people. Obviously at this point in time it’s very machine orientated, not much requirement for labour. [The need for labour] will increase once housing construction starts in earnest, which will be about February.”
The anticipated completion dates are split. The first section to be ready for occupation will be the community facilities and Area C located near the village exit.
The remaining areas will be completed in 2018.