There isn’t very much to buy on St Kitts, there really isn’t. There aren’t even any of those huge billboards on the way from the airport saying “Luxury for less!” or other such nonsense.
This very pretty island in the eastern Caribbean is a largely unspoilt landscape of gentle countryside, lush rainforests and palm-fringed beaches where the temperature rarely falls below the mid-eighties.
“A lot of local people who own land here emigrated all over the world to find work and don’t realise they’re sitting on a gold mine at home,” says Peter Allcorn, the island’s honorary British consul and a St Kitts resident for 22 years. Ten years ago land on the island was worth 35p a square foot; today that figure is £8 and rising rapidly. Allcorn reckons that in a population of 39,000 there are only about 50 Britons who live here permanently, plus the “snowbirds” who have second homes and come to escape British winters, including Lester Pigott and the singer Joan Armatrading, who was born here.
An ambitious new development is planned on the former Belmont Estate sugar plantation in the north west. At the moment Kittitian Heights (it’s pronounced Katty-Shan) is just a huge expanse of green fields dotted with monkeys and wild piglets, but eventually it will be a five-star resort on 390 acres of land.
The Government has grasped the nettle over the decline of the sugar and banana industries and is pursuing development with open, if selective, arms. Encouraged by the choice of St Kitts as one of the destinations for the 2007 Cricket World Cup and determined to make the island attractive to upmarket tourists, it has spent a fortune on a new airport, roads, the telephone system and infrastructure for cruise ships.
In fact, one of the architects who designed the island’s splendid new cricket stadium is the driving force behind Kittitian Heights. Val Kempadoo, a Trinidadian who describes himself as a “social entrepreneur”, wants it to be an inclusive resort where staff can eat in the same restaurant as the residents. Central to his vision is an “artists’ village” where artists from around the world will be invited to work for two months, and given room, board and travelling expenses. It all sounds a bit, well, hippie, doesn’t it? But a similar scheme in Vermont has a long waiting list while the Andy Warhol Foundation has expressed interest in the St Kitts project.
Kempadoo is emphatic that the scheme will work. “Tourists and buyers are much more sensitive now to the cultural environment that they are visiting. I have met people who say ‘Oh, I’ve been to the Caribbean’ but they couldn’t remember which island they were on because they spent two weeks in a gated environment. In some resorts only six cents in every dollar stays on the island, which is disgraceful.”
Kempadoo’s idea has found favour with Denzel Douglas, Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, who says Kittitian Heights has the potential to be the model for future Caribbean resorts. He says: “I’ve seen too many gated communities on Barbados and St Lucia where local people are excluded from their own beaches. This will be the first development with a conscience.”
The architects’ drawings show strong designs taken from the strikingly individual styles of St Kitts. The eaves of the 67 pastel-painted villas and 54 buy-to-let cottages that make up the first phase will be narrow, to resist the 150mph winds that bash the place occasionally, and the houses will have several staggered roofs instead of just one, for the same reason. All the homes will be set around a boutique hotel, spa, the inevitable 18-hole golf course designed by Ian Woosnam and, bizarrely, a recording studio. Prices start at $330,000 (£166,000) for a one-bedroom cottage, $383,000 for a two-bedroom apartment and $822,000 for a three-bedroom villa. Other bonuses are that you can fly direct to St Kitts from London with Excel Airways, the houses and condos look very nice, and they’re not expensive for the Caribbean. They go on sale in January, so if you’re tempted then get in quick.
The only things that two British residents, Dave and Laura Wright, miss about their land of birth are Dave’s parents, The Times and Tetley teabags — in that order. “We used to miss the football when we first came, but we get the Premiership now,” says Dave, a retired antiques dealer from East Anglia. He and Laura looked at several Caribbean islands before settling on St Kitts, where they built a large four-storey house overlooking Frigate Bay when they moved to the island seven years ago. They say that they cannot imagine ever going back to the UK. “The thought of driving around London in heavy traffic every day is a long-forgotten nightmare,” Dave says.
Laura adds: “It takes a while to get used to the pace of life — building work seemed to take for ever — but we love the weather and the fact that we can afford to eat out four or five times a week. We don’t have any heating bills either.”
www.kittitianheights.com
FACT FILE
History: The islands were settled by the British in 1623, becoming independent in 1983. The two-island nation is a Commonwealth country with the Queen as head of state.
Population: 39,000.
Hurricanes: From July to October. In September 1998 Hurricane Georges caused £200m damage.
Trade: Sugar was the mainstay until the 1970s.
Good times: Carnival — parades, costumes and salsa — is in December.
