Investors plan soccer stadium for Haiti shantytown
May 25, 2012 1:55 AM
Investors plan soccer stadium for Haiti shantytown
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A local sports hero, a New York real estate developer and a well-known architect are teaming up to build a soccer stadium in Haiti's notorious Cite Soleil, hoping to revive the seaside shantytown known throughout the hemisphere for its extreme poverty and gang battles.
Foreign investors in Haiti have largely directed their efforts at rebuilding from a devastating 2010 earthquake, focusing their funds on Port-au-Prince and the overlapping cities that make up the capital and the country's sleepy coastlines.
But ex-Haiti soccer star Robert "Boby" Duval, the mastermind of the $5 million project, developer Delos LLC and architect Carlos Zapata are looking elsewhere — at a city of tin shacks and open sewage canals shunned by investors, avoided by diplomats and at one point so dangerous that U.N. peacekeepers would only enter it in armored vehicles.
The sponsors say they hope the stadium project will tackle problems that predate the 2010 disaster.
More:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501715_162-57441378/investors-plan-soccer-stadium-for-haiti-shantytown/
