Mexico Shuts Down Chinese Mega-Development Project in Cancun
By D. Johnson
Mexico killed what was to be the second-largest Chinese commercial market outside of China: Dragon Mart Cancun. It would have been a mega-mercado (second only to Dragon Mart in Dubai) full of principally Chinese products, and it was to be located a stone’s throw south of Cancun on 1,400 acres of pristine land. Experts estimated that at least 2,000 Chinese exhibitors would have arrived from China to showcase their wares in the thousands of shop sites contemplated by Dragon Mart. These merchants would have also lived in the over 700 on-site housing units.
However, after being greenlit for this 200 million dollar project, the developers started out by trashing the environment. According to PROFEPA, Mexico’s EPA, Dragon Mart developers caused significant ecological damage to vast areas of Mexico’s Caribbean coast. The destruction is so extensive, said the agency’s top prosecutor Guillermo Haro, that there is no way the project can go forward. In addition to shutting the Dragon down permanently, PROFEPA also slapped the developers with over $2 million in fines and the possibility of criminal penalties in the future.
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