Canal homes

People have asked for more info on where these places are. I am going to try to do better in that respect. So, this post, like the last one, is about an area of Providenciales called Leeward-Going-Through. It's known as just "Leeward" here:



This is a "Google Earth" image. Since it is very hard to find a decent map of these islands (let alone a chart) I will use their images from time to time. Provo is the island at the bottom of that image, the tip of Water Cay is at the top.

We have posted a lot of photos of shorefront and hilltop homes here. There are some other homes that we think are also pretty cool, and those are the ones on the canals. If you look closely at the GE image above, you can just see the canals. They are visually divided, although they all connect. The ones on the left are an older neighborhood, almost completely developed now. The water in those canals is darker, due to normal sea life growning on the rocks on the bottom of it. This is called the Columbus canal area. The banks of the canals are lined with very nice homes:



Hope you guys don't mind the 'panorama' photos. We were in a hurry this morning because the dog was AWOL. This is from three photos I took from the bridge that divides the old Columbus Canal from the new Leeward Gardens Canal areas.

I expanded the GE view, and rotated it CCW a little, so you could get a better view of the canals themselves:



You should see the road that crosses a bridge right about in the middle, and divides the established canals to the left from the new ones under construction to the right. I was standing on that little bridge when I took the photos for the pano above, and also this one:



Obviously the developers are filling in the connection between the old and new canals. I don't know if they intend for it to be permanent, but I doubt it. They are probably going to draw down the new canals to build some bridges or something.
But, quite frankly, at this point nothing would surprise me, either.

This is looking down the new canal from the same bridge:



Its easy to see that this whole area is still under development, big time. Compare that to the view of the homes alongside the same bridge just fifty yards away.

The sat images from GE are actually about two years old. I count about one home on the new canal image from space. There are actually about two dozen built or under construction now. And they are nice homes, for sure:



There are still lots available for sale on both the older, and the new canal. We looked long and hard at the idea of buying one and building a home here. I loved the idea of having our boat tied right up to our own dock, with easy access to the ocean. And it's only seven miles to Pine Cay. There's a great school for younger kids within an easy walk. Logistically, it's a great spot. When we were looking at land in the spring of '05, we could have bought a .75 acre lot on this canal for around $ 200K. The lot on the right in that photo above, with the small Casurinas tree, is being listed right now for $ 470K. It's .58 acre. That's the least expensive one I saw listed today after a brief search.

We decided to build elsewhere. I tend to over-analyze things to the smallest details, and we are very happy with our choice. But living on a canal would have been okay too. We looked long and hard at canal lots in Florida before deciding to move to the TCI.

The next little canal "spur" to the east is more developed, although there are still at least two lots available there, too. Our former neighbors built the house on the right, and moved in a couple months ago.



The lots closest to the ocean access went first. The Premier himself lives in the house right where the canal meets Leeward-Going-Through. Nice neighborhood.