Mérida, Yucatán — Redevelopment surrounding the Mérida International Airport will include more than a shopping center.
Plans were announced last August to replace a low-key Bepensa building at the airport entrance with a Walmart and other shops, plus two hotels including a City Express. That was just the beginning.
Now a rental-car agency and at least one additional hotel are announced.
A parcel of land, visible from Avenida Itzaes, has been cleared of the one-story, nondescript bottling plant building.
The representative of developer, Juan Manuel Ponce Díaz, stressed that so far the plan to rebuild the commercial area near the airport seeks to provide more services for the benefit of people who use the airport or who live in the area.
The hotels and the car rental agency will be built by 2019, he estimated.
Several hotel chains are interested in partnering with the development, but the developer’s representative did not mention brand names.
Earlier reports also mentioned a movie theater as part of the complex.
“That is to say that the first thing that tourists will see when they arrive in Mérida by air will be a new commercial complex that rises at the entrance of the airport, whose building of its type is needed for the course,” said Ponce Díaz, in Spanish.
Ponce Díaz is a Yucatecan businessman and member of the Bepensa board of directors.
