My Secret Plan In Panama

When we made the decision to purchase the finca known as Los Islotes, Life and I had years of experience buying and selling property around the world.

However, developing a five-star resort community in the jungle isn’t the same as amassing a portfolio of condo rentals. We needed professional help.

A friend recommended a Panamanian architect. For our first meeting, Ricardo walked through the door carrying six oversized hardback books.

“Would you like to take a look?” he asked as he sat down next to me. He held out his books as though sharing a treasure. I reached over to pick up the one on top. “Las Casas De Leon.” Beneath it was “Haciendas De Cartagena.”

Ricardo had my attention. I had a shelf full of books like these myself. A light went on. Now here’s an idea I hadn’t considered, I thought. It was a notion so big that I almost didn’t let myself have it.

Since the first time I set foot on the property, I’d been convinced that, in context, a Los Islotes development community, even a five-star one, seemed base.

But what if we built something more noble? Something more lasting?

What if we built a city?

I’ve been in love with Spanish-colonial cities since my first visit to Granada, Nicaragua, when I was 23 years old. In the decades since, I’ve spent a lot of time in that and other New World cities that Spain built. I don’t have to squint to imagine beyond the crumbling plaster, rusting iron, and rotting wood they’ve been reduced to by the passage of time. I see only how glorious these places must have been in their day. I prefer them to museums. When I visit the Louvre, I’m more interested in the architectural details of the palace than in the art it houses.

Spain’s greed-based agenda meant that New World cities came to be at a staggering cost. Those realities can be hard to set aside, but the cities themselves are an architectural legacy.

Spain’s New World outposts were developed according to formal guidelines, each around a central plaza anchored by a church. Classic Spanish-colonial design features soft arches, white stucco walls, red clay-tiled roofs, carved wooden doors, balconies, interior courtyards, fountains…

Why go to the trouble of building an arch when you could make the opening square? Because you can and because the resulting structure is more pleasing. Everyone who passes through benefits.

Architecture is art, and great art boosts our spirits, lifts our souls, challenges our minds, and inspires our imaginations. I appreciate as much of that as I can get.

My first day in Granada, I walked to the square at dusk. The setting sun tinted the city’s blue and red structures golden. Children ran and called to each other in play. Old men read the day’s news; old women shared the day’s gossip. Young lovers sat close on wooden benches, vendors offered warm tortillas and roasted corn, and wandering guitarists serenaded.

I returned the next night and the next to watch the show replay against the backdrop of buildings that’d stood that ground for 500 years. I appreciated the beauty of the scene but even more the continuity of the experience. Generation after generation has played their part on this stage. Each picks up where their fathers left off, adding their marks for the next in line.

Surveying the scene from the shade of one of the lemonwood trees that grow here, I would feel connected to the past of this special place and part of its future. For me that’s the upside of great architecture.

The Spanish started their development on the island where Columbus first set foot in the New World. In 1496, in what is today the Dominican Republic, Columbus’ brother Bartholomew founded Santo Domingo, the capital of Spain’s first colony.

Calle Las Damas, the first street of the original city and so the oldest paved street in the Americas, is lined with pale stone facades that have borne centuries of witness. Here the Columbuses built a customs house, a hospital, a cathedral, a university, and a library, everything required for a considered, comfortable, fulfilling life.

I left my first meeting with Ricardo with the start of a grand plan.

At Los Islotes we wouldn’t just create a luxe-level coastal resort. We’d also build a city. My mind lit up at the thought.

My favorite spot in Paris is the center point of the Tuileries. Here, one of history’s most successful attempts at city planning is on display in one view.

Standing in that garden lane, you have the Louvre on one side and the Place de la Concorde and its obelisk on the other.

Beyond Concorde is the Champs-Élysées and its triumphal arch.

If you shift your head slightly, you see the Eiffel Tower.

The Tuileries are the work of Catherine de Medici, a diabolical woman by accounts, mother to three French kings, famous for sacrificing her children, her country, and her principles for power. Alas, another contradiction in human history. I can’t help but thank the woman for her part in the efforts that, over centuries, have created a spot where I feel grateful to be alive every time I pass through.

Along the Veraguas coast where Lief and I are pioneering, Nature seems to extend a challenge. Could we make a place here that does justice to the Eden she’s provided?

We’ve decided to try.

Until next time,

Kathleen Peddicord

Founding Publisher, Overseas Opportunity Letter