Corredor

About Corredor:

Corredor covers 276 square kilometres in the north of Corredores canton, from the Fila de Cal, the ridge that marks the boundary with Coto Brus, down to the flat Coto Colorado plain. Ciudad Neily stands at 46 metres on the banks of the Caño Seco and Corredor rivers, 18 kilometres from the Panama border at Paso Canoas and 342 kilometres from San José along the Interamericana. Five national roads cross the district: Ruta 2, Ruta 238 toward Laurel, Rutas 608 and 614, and Ruta 237, which climbs to San Vito on a narrow, winding road with a steep drop in just a few kilometres. South of town, a paved 1,000-metre airstrip at Coto 47 sits among the oil palms.

Neily began as a place to spend a banana wage. Around 1940 Ricardo Neily Jop, a Lebanese immigrant, bought a large property here, opened a commissary for workers on the fruit company’s farms and sold parcels to merchants who set up shop beside it. Once the company began planting the Coto valley in 1945, the scattered hamlet filled in with stores and houses, became a villa, and in 1973 was made a city and the seat of the new canton. The church of Santa Marta dates from 1966. Today the centre lives on commerce of every kind, and among the towns of Costa Rica’s south only San Isidro de El General is larger.

The land itself decides a great deal here. Most of the district is low alluvial plain crossed by the Coto Colorado and its tributaries, among them the Caracol, Nuevo, Caño Seco, Corredor, Abrojo, Coloradito and La Vaca, some of them linked by canals. The Caño Seco is the one the town watches: its upper basin drops a thousand metres through a short, narrow gorge, carries a heavy load of sediment and reaches Neily fast. When Hurricane Joan struck, the dikes gave way and the river flooded the outer barrios, and in November 2020 a break at La Fuente took the street and at least three houses, water topped the dike at La Colina and 260 people were moved to shelters. The same soil that floods is fertile, which is why palm, rice, bananas, cacao, maize, beans and cattle all share the plain.

Two in five people in the canton live in Corredor: 17,250 in 2011, two thirds of them in town, and close to 19,000 by 2022. Neily is the service centre for this end of the south. It has a CCSS hospital, a UNED university centre a hundred metres north of the Red Cross and across from the Registro Civil, the Municipalidad de Corredores, and banks and shops around the park. Buyers are mostly local families and merchants paying in colones, plus farm families from the plain, and builders in town handle housing bond applications for families who qualify.

Houses in Corredor:

Houses here are mostly single-storey family homes on their own lots, in town barrios such as Carmen, Capri, Bosque, San Juan, Progreso and Valle del Sur, and in the villages strung along the Interamericana and the roads across the plain. Three-bedroom, two-bathroom houses with a laundry room at the back come up for resale, and near the centre homes share the street with shops and workshops. Before you settle on one of the houses for sale in Ciudad Neily, ask whether that street took water in November 2020 and how far the house stands from the Caño Seco dike.

Land and Lots in Corredor:

Lots in the centre of Neily can be very small, down to 127 square metres on a quiet dead-end street a few blocks from the park, and ready-to-build lots with their taxes paid turn up in the barrios. The bigger parcels sit on the Interamericana toward Río Claro. At El Ceibo, four kilometres from the centre, flat frontage land of more than a hectare with water, power and phone lines suits a warehouse, a vehicle yard or a workshop, and one such parcel was once drawn up as 21 house lots of 300 square metres. For lots for sale in Corredor anywhere near a river, get the municipal land-use certificate and find out where the protected strip along the bank ends before you talk price.

Farms in Corredor:

Between the town and Laurel the plain is working farmland, given over to palm, rice, bananas and pasture. Around Coloradito, farms of a hectare and a half are enough for a house, fruit trees and a few animals within minutes of Neily, and elsewhere on the plain some estates run well past a hundred hectares. Up toward Villa Roma, on the slopes of the Fila de Cal, water is the problem: the village has gone without piped drinking water, with few sources that last through the dry season. Visit a lowland farm in the wet months, when you can see where water stands, and ask who maintains the canals that cross it.

Rentals in Corredor:

With a hospital, a university centre, public offices and a busy commercial core, Neily is a working town, and its rentals are apartments and houses let by the month rather than holiday homes. When you view one, ask how it gets its water and whether there is a storage tank. Find out, too, whether the building has ever taken water in a flood.

FAQ:

• Does Ciudad Neily flood?

  Some sectors have. The town is protected by dikes along the Caño Seco, and when they failed in November 2020 the damage reached La Fuente, La Colina, Pueblo Nuevo, La Campiña, Cuatro Bocas, Estrella del Sur, Coto 42 and Coto 45. Locate the property on the CNE flood hazard maps for Corredores and ask the municipality what work has been done on the dike in that sector.

• What should I check before buying a lot near the Caño Seco or the Corredor river?

  Start with the river, not the paperwork: walk the lot and see how far it sits from the bank and from the dike. Then pull the cadastral plan and the folio real from the Registro Nacional (Registro Inmobiliario) and check that the name on the title matches the seller. Ask the Municipalidad de Corredores for the land-use certificate and whether the river’s protected strip touches the lot, and request availability letters for water and electricity.

• Which places belong to Corredor district?

  Besides Ciudad Neily and its barrios, the district takes in hill villages such as Cuesta Fila de Cal and Villa Roma and plain villages such as Abrojo, Campo Dos, Coloradito, San Rafael, Estrella del Sur and the numbered Coto settlements from 42 to 53. A listing that says Neily can mean any of them. Check the exact location on the cadastral plan, because services and flood exposure change a lot between the centre and a village out on the plain.

• How do I get to Corredor?

  The Interamericana runs straight through: Ciudad Neily is 342 kilometres from San José and 18 kilometres back up the highway from Paso Canoas. From San Vito, Ruta 237 comes down the Fila de Cal on tight bends, so drive it carefully and by daylight. Light aircraft can use the airstrip at Coto 47.

• What services does Ciudad Neily have?

  Neily has a CCSS hospital, a UNED university centre, a Registro Civil office and the Municipalidad de Corredores. Banks and shops of every kind fill the streets around the park. Families from across the canton come here for paperwork, health care and shopping.