Merida, Yucatan — The city’s northern panorama continues onward and upward.
In addition to the 30 towers that are already there, another 30 are coming, said the local vice-president of the Mexican Association of Real Estate Professionals (AMPI).
Gabriela Chavarria Roman also said a total of 39 upscale construction projects — from sprawling shopping centers to mixed-use towers — are in the works.
The 10 tallest buildings in Merida, either existing or proposed, average 17.8 floors.
“We’ll have a very different city with many foreigners living here, who are very used to vertical housing with low maintenance costs,” Chavarria Roman said. The term “foreigners” in this case includes well-heeled newcomers from across Mexico.
A prominent example is the first of two 31-story Country Towers high rises that opened in 2014, which remain the tallest in Merida. A planned third tower has not yet been erected.
But Chavarria Roman said that the vertical trend began to really take off in 2016.
High rises are self-contained communities, lessening the dilemma of building in areas not reached by city services, she added. It’s also a mode of living familiar to residents from urban centers such as Mexico City and Guadalajara.
Some parcels in Yucatan have tripled in value in eight years, while remaining relatively cheap compared to some other cities.
Since the 1990s, a wave of expats found a huge selection of attractive historic homes, ready to be renovated. Another sea change began around 2007, when the international community’s impact on the downtown began to reach critical mass. Media attention soon followed. The city began to appear fashionable.
Although inventory is tighter now, the renovation trend continues. Today, 70 percent of the Centro’s restored homes are income-producing rentals on Airbnb, she said.
By 2010, the commercial transformation began as investors found a high quality of life and relative safety, combined with economic growth. The trend toward mixed-use plazas and office buildings took off, not just in the north, but the north-east fringe.
{ 2017: Restaurant boom, and ‘bohemian’ vibe, fuel Centro nightlife }
