Why We Built Only Nine Villas on Ten Acres in Turks and Caicos
When we began planning The Summit on Blue Mountain in Providenciales, the site could have supported considerably more villas. The land could physically hold them. The infrastructure could serve them. We chose nine, and that decision says more about how Latitude 22 approaches development than almost anything else we've done.
The Summit occupies roughly ten acres on Blue Mountain, the highest point on Providenciales and, at 156 feet, tied for the highest point on the island. Visit Turks and Caicos Islands. From the beginning, the site offered something unusual: elevation, cooling trade winds, long views across the island, the north shore and the reef beyond, and enough land to give individual homes real separation.
The conventional calculation would have started with how many villas the land could accommodate and worked backward from there. We started somewhere else entirely, and I want to explain why, because this thinking is commonly overlooked in luxury development.
Density Is One of the Few Decisions You Can't Undo
Almost every development begins with a density calculation. Land, infrastructure and construction cost money, so adding another villa can make a project substantially more profitable. There's nothing wrong with that math on its own terms, and any project still has to make economic sense. I've run those numbers on every site we've ever evaluated.
What I've noticed over the years is that density carries a permanence most early decisions don't. Once you've divided a site into smaller lots, narrowed the spaces between buildings, and compromised view corridors, those things stay compromised. You can repaint a house, replace finishes, and redesign an entry. The site plan outlives all of it. The weight of that decision sits on everything built afterward.
There is research supporting the idea that homeowners place real value on lower neighborhood density, although the effect varies substantially by location and household. A recent NBER study of U.S. suburban homeowners, for example, found a moderately negative average preference for additional nearby density, while also finding substantial variation among households and neighborhoods. National Bureau of Economic Research
That research isn't directly about Caribbean luxury development, and I wouldn't pretend that it is. But the underlying issue is familiar. Buyers notice what sits outside the window, how close the neighboring house feels, and whether today's view could disappear behind tomorrow's construction.
At The Summit, we decided privacy, space and views were worth protecting before a single road was drawn.
Let the Land Determine the Site Plan
I want to know where the best views sit, where the prevailing breezes come from, how the sun moves across the property, and where a house can hold genuine physical privacy rather than privacy borrowed from a hedge.
Most of all, I want to know what's distinctive about this specific piece of ground that shouldn't be lost when we build on it.
Blue Mountain gave us unusual answers.
The elevation opens views in multiple directions. The trade winds provide natural ventilation, but they can also be strong, so we had to plan for both. The topography lets residences occupy different levels of the hillside, so each villa holds its own position instead of sitting shoulder to shoulder on a flat grid.
Those characteristics became the basis of the site plan, and the architecture then had to respond to them.
When the land speaks first, the buildings make sense decades later. When the model speaks first, you spend the life of the project managing friction the site plan created on day one.
Space Itself Becomes the Amenity
Real estate has traditionally been described through addition. More square footage, more bedrooms, more amenities, more marble, more technology.
I used to accept that framing without much question.
After years of watching how buyers actually live in these homes, I've come to believe some of the most valuable qualities in residential development come from restraint.
The house that isn't sitting directly beside yours.
The building that isn't blocking your view.
The extra floor that wasn't added simply because the planning rules allowed it.
I've seen that preference increasingly in the luxury market. For some second-home buyers, space, seclusion and physical separation from neighboring residences are becoming part of the definition of luxury itself.
Some of our buyers at The Summit had already experienced resort condominium ownership and were looking for something different: greater privacy, more space and fewer neighbors.
That distinction mattered here because we never set out to create a resort. We set out to create a small residential community of individual homes, and those two products want different things from the land.
A resort generally benefits from concentrating activity, energy and programming in one place. A private residence benefits from separation, quiet and the certainty that the landscape around it will still be landscape in twenty years.
You feel that difference the moment you arrive at a home and see terrain instead of another building.
The Economics of Restraint
Building fewer residences requires more economic conviction, in my experience.
A developer has to believe that preserving the qualities of the site will create enough value to compensate for the units left unbuilt. The value of another lot is obvious, and you can drop it into a spreadsheet in thirty seconds. The value of a permanently protected view corridor resists that kind of measurement, and so does the physical privacy between homes.
Those qualities become visible only when the development takes shape and people start standing inside it.
The spreadsheet that argues for more units can also measure the wrong thing. It counts the revenue created by another villa far more easily than it measures what that villa may subtract from the privacy, views and sense of space enjoyed by every other owner.
That's particularly difficult to quantify in a low-density luxury development, where those qualities are part of the product itself.
There's a second economic layer that took me longer to appreciate.
Restraint compounds.
Every decision to do less at The Summit—whether lower density, fewer buildings or slower timelines—created downstream value we couldn't have manufactured later. The homes hold their character because nothing crowds them. The views hold because nothing rose to block them.
I optimize for year five of ownership rather than the moment of sale, because year five is when the novelty is gone and only the structure remains.
Architecture Should Belong to the Site
The same thinking shaped the buildings themselves.
The Summit villas use large areas of glass and extensive indoor-outdoor living to work with the views and the climate. Living roofs help the structures sit quietly within the hillside. Rooftop solar and battery systems address the real conditions of energy use and resilience on an island.
None of those choices exists independently of the site, and each one is a direct response to it.
That distinction matters to me personally.
I've seen plenty of luxury products designed as a standalone object, ready to land on whatever parcel becomes available, and it tends to feel that way once it's built.
I've found that treating slope, elevation, vegetation, wind and views as design inputs produces architecture that feels more connected to its site. That connection is something buyers often feel physically even when they can't necessarily name it.
The most durable developments I've studied emerge when the land and the architecture start influencing one another early, each one pushing back on the other until the result feels inevitable.
What Blue Mountain Taught Me About Turks and Caicos Real Estate Development
Development always involves tradeoffs, and I want to be honest about that.
Construction costs matter, infrastructure matters, planning regulations matter, and every project ultimately has to be financially viable. I've walked away from sites I loved because the numbers refused to work, and I'll do it again.
Restraint without economic discipline is just an expensive hobby.
What Blue Mountain confirmed for me is that the earliest decisions carry the most weight. Before anyone chooses finishes, appliances or furniture, the developer has already determined most of what it will feel like to live there.
Where the roads go.
Where the houses sit.
What gets built.
And what stays open ground.
Those choices are locked in before the first buyer ever visits, and they hold their consequences for generations.
What Blue Mountain confirmed for me is simple: density is permanent, so it deserves to be treated as one of the most consequential decisions in a project.
Read the land before you build the model. The site either supports the product or it doesn't, and financial engineering can't repair a compromised site plan.
Space, privacy and protected views create real value even when the spreadsheet struggles to price them.
The question I now ask at the start of every project has shifted from what we can build to what we should build.
At The Summit, our answer was nine villas, and I believe the space between them will prove as valuable as the villas themselves.
About Gary Belk
Gary Belk is the founder of Latitude 22, a residential real estate developer based in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands. His work focuses on site planning, architecture, construction and residential development, including Karaya Blue and The Summit on Blue Mountain.
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