Miches, in Dominican NE impresses U.S. investors

MICHES, Dominican Republic.- Investors who visited this tourism region were fascinated with its overwhelming beauty, natural resources and the villagers’ hospitality, and said it’s ideal to develop environmentally-sustainable projects which contribute to improve the income of thousands of families and its inhabitants’ standard of living.
"The true treasures of Miches are its natural beaches, rivers, mountains, the lagoons Redonda and Limon and all its resources. What exists here is a true natural wealth," said doctor Don Melnick, head of the Center of the Environment, Economy and Society of Columbia University, in New York.
The university professor spoke atop the over 1,000 feet high Redonda Mountain, overlooking Samaná Bay, the lagoons, and the coast’s white-sand beaches, bordered with coconuts.
"I don’t know another place like Miches in the Dominican Republic," said Robert Roskind, president of the group Crescent Hotels, a chain that includes the hotels Sheraton, Marriott, Hilton, Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Double Tree and Embassy Suites. "This is really wonderful," said the investor to his colleague Daniel Krupp, of the Krupp Family Foundation. "It’s really a beautiful place, very beautiful."
Both investors came to the Dominican Republic with Melnick, invited by John R. Gagain, executive director of the Presidential Commission for the Objectives of the Millennium and Sustained Development (COPDES).
Before touring part of the municipality Miches, they stopped in the city El Seibo, where Gagain treated them to the famous Dominican root beer mabí seibano.
The group met with the community’s mayor Cesar Hernandez, and walked along several of the town’s streets and visited with fishermen, where they talked with poor families who live near the seashore.
"Mr. Roskind represents a very large group of businesspeople from the private sector that focuses mainly in tourism development, in the area of construction and development of hotels," said Melnick.
The group previously met with president Leonel Fernandez, and the ministers of Tourism Felix Jimenez and of the Environment, Max Puig.
The chief executive liked the idea of building in Miches an institute aimed at institutionalizing the scientific and technical advisory’s office, in alliance with Columbia University, through the initiative "Environmentally Sustainable Economic Growth," which includes the use of the Municipality of Miches as a sustainable development model.
"Basically this initiative has the following aspects: The natural wealth, the infrastructure and the human capital. The idea is to join these three points and to work together so the impact, or final result, is an improvement in the quality of life for all, quality in the environment, an improvement in infrastructure, the highways and the development of human capital in the region" said Melnick in a brief interview.
The Columbia University professor said a project of this nature would not work in any form if it’s not headed by the communities that conform Miches. "It’s a project of Miches, for Miches and must be handled by the Miches community itself."
Several Government and private agencies, as well as Dominican and foreign universities are involved in the project, designed to develop initiative in Miches as model and take it to other localities in the country and other countries in the region and the world.
COPDES assistant director Vivian Sundset served as translator in the interview.



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