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What will Boquete look like in three years?

Posted by Jim Tosch on October 2, 2015 at 2:06pm in News

Have any of you seen the impact of a Walmart on a small town? Frequently the downtown area turns into a ghost town while all the retail dollars shift to shopping area a few miles out of town. In the next three or four years twenty or thirty minutes from Boquete there will be a huge mall with an anchor grocery store and a bus terminal. A few miles closer on the highway returning to Boquete will be a RIBA Smith Grocery and a mall. Pricemart already impacts Boquete's retail services sector and these new much larger commercial centers will be closer. What happens to Boquete? Will it just be tourist shops and real estate offices? Is anyone thinking about the future? Should BCP be asking some questions and encouraging planning? Or, should we just sit back and let the chips fall where they may?

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Replies

Kathy Reny October 5, 2015 at 6:25am

How sad.
Robert Berding October 4, 2015 at 8:11am

Walter. As I understood you are not living in Panama. Are you living in Europe? Germany?

Your name is German. I have been an expat for 27 years. Apparently you consider yourself as a SABIO.
Peter Stryker October 4, 2015 at 7:02am

Walter, actually a higher minimum wage would put more misery on the poor. A higher minimum wage always results in higher prices as the increases are passed along in the cost of goods and services. Only the few with jobs will see an increase in their paychecks while most of the poor, who don't have jobs, now have to pay higher prices for things they already can't afford. I never understood the minimum wage thing as why not just make the minimum wage one million balboas an hour.
Jim Tosch October 3, 2015 at 11:21am

Thanks Leslie, and good luck with your attraction.
Jim Tosch October 3, 2015 at 10:06am

Walter, that would take Boquete back to the year 2000 -pre Valle Escondido- with a much smaller offering of retail.
Jim Tosch October 3, 2015 at 9:57am

Bonnie, I think you nailed it. The biggest competition for down town Boquete may be In Alto. However, already the busses are running constantly from Boquete, Caldera and Palmira. This going to be some race. If that college is for real in Alto it would seem simple to move into the empty clinics to start.
Joanne October 3, 2015 at 9:54am

That's what I thought too Walter. Gringo is a term, mainly used in Spanish-speaking and in Portuguese-speaking countries, to refer to any foreigner.
Jim Tosch October 3, 2015 at 8:32am

How long has Plaza San Francisco been open for business?
Keith Woolford October 3, 2015 at 8:18am

Walter, the influx of 'Gringos', along with Canadians, Italians, Swiss, Germans and anyone else that found their way to Boquete, began over 100 years ago,

The biggest commercial expansion I've seen around town in the last five years has probably been Ferreteria Ivan.

David, on the other hand, is a city on the move.

However, it's rapid growth has nothing to do with the handful of 'Gringos' that live there.
- Robert Berding > Keith Woolford October 4, 2015 at 6:42am
  
  Yes Ivan did a proper job. Romero would like to have a larger store in Boquete. However cost of land in Boquete are too high to build and run a larger supermarket.