Tropical Trio – The Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Mexico
BY TOM BEDELL
PUNTA CANA REGION Dominican Republic
When the dust settles over the next few years, it will be abundantly clear that the Dominican Republic has an embarrassment of golfing riches. It has long had Pete Dye’s gem at Casa de Campo resort in La Romana, the Teeth of the Dog course, to draw visitors. But now the Punta Cana region along the east coast is weighing in with strong work from designers like Tom Fazio, Jack Nicklaus, and Nick Faldo, with concomitant real estate opportunities equally inviting.
Along with all the private investment came the announcement in April of 2008 by Dominican Republic Minister of Tourism, Felix Jimenez, that the government was planning to invest approximately $1 billion in tourism infrastructure by 2012.
A four-mile ride from the Punta Cana International Airport, the PuntaCana Resort & Club fired the figurative opening shot in the Dominican’s golf boom in 2001 when it opened P.B. Dye’s La Cana course with its startling seventh hole, featuring 21 bunkers. The course will be undergoing renovations, including replanting with Paspalum Supreme grass next year. Homes in the Arrecife community, on La Cana’s back nine, range from $1.8 to $5 million.
P.B. is also working on a new layout, the inland Hacienda course. That will be part of a 515-lot development, with homesites starting at half an acre and $400,000. Hacienda should open late 2009 or early 2010.
But with an anticipated 3,000 tee times a year, the soon-toopen Tom Fazio-designed Corales course is likely to be one of the most exclusive courses in the Dominican, its members drawn from PuntaCana’s exclusive 140-home gated seafront community, Corales. The course, to stretch some 7,400 yards, will have a private beach club as well as clubhouse, and seven holes running alongside the Caribbean Sea.
Corales homesites are currently ranging from $1.8 to $3.3 million, although money alone won’t put a key in one’s hand here, since the neighbors have a say in the process. Perhaps that’s understandable, with residents like Oscar de la Renta,
Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Julio Iglesias. Fashion designer de la Renta turned his professional hand to the interiors of the 15 exclusive Tortuga Bay villas that debuted last year within the resort, a good option for visitors pondering a property buy.
Just a bit south of Punta Cana is Cap Cana, developed by the Abrisa Group, which clearly doesn’t believe in thinking small. Its master plan projects an investment of $1.5 billion over 12 to 15 years in developing 5,000 homesites on 30,000 available acres, along with five-star hotels (the Sanctuary at Cap Cana is now open), a marina district (now open with three-story residences ranging from $3 to $4.5 million, 500 slips, and 100-foot plus yacht capacity), a Racquet Village for tennis fans, three and a half miles of beachfront, and five golf courses, three of them Jack Nicklaus Signature Courses.
The first of these, Punta Espada, opened with a splash in 2006 and this year hosted a Champions Tour event, the first of three contracted for (with an option for two more years). The course is one of the Golden Bear’s better efforts, which is saying something. The delight begins with a par-five second hole that horseshoes around an azure water hazard, finishing at a green with an ocean backdrop. The fun continues throughout, right to the money hole at No. 13, a par-three right over the crashing surf with little room for error. The $26-million Las Iguanas, the second Nicklaus course, is nearing completion, and at least nine holes will open in 2009.
We haven’t even mentioned Donald Trump yet. The Donald is building two courses at Cap Cana, Farallon and Dolinas, within the gated Farallon Estates community that is set on an awe-inspiring 230-foot cliffside setting overlooking all of Punta Espada. Trump would undoubtedly call it the best view in the world, and he wouldn’t be far wrong.
Twenty miles northwest of the Punta Cana airport, there’s another spot that has to be included in the running for best view, on the new Faldo Legacy Course at Roco Ki. The 17th hole is a short par three destined to be one of the most photographed holes in golf. It may be a fairly simple 125-yard wedge shot, but it’s complicated by sea, sky, rocks, wild vegetation, crashing surf, wind, and one’s own long mental history of twisted swing thoughts.
But if that doesn’t suffice, one can turn around and look at the 18th hole, a par five that crosses the sea twice, before ending near the base of the Westin Roco Ki Beach & Golf Resort, the first luxury hotel to open (most likely in spring, 2009) at what will be another top-flight development. The 15-year plan calls for four golf courses, a deepwater marina, and more hotels and luxury residences (Fairmont has just signed on), all along 3.2 miles of prime beachfront.
From the four-story Eco Dream Villas nestled in the tropical forests off the beach, to the Cacique Residences and Golf Villas overlooking the course, the property offerings are varied—several under the Westin and Fairmont banners—and sales are already brisk (course designer Nick Faldo among the buyers), priced from the low $400,000s to over $3 million.
LOS SUENOS RESORT AND MARINA Costa Rica
When Ted Robinson, Jr. first visited Costa Rica in the late 1990s, golf was new to the country and he was new to Costa Rica and its naturally wild side. But the designer of the dramatic course at the Los Suenos Marriott Ocean & Golf Resort in Playa Herradura, had a quick lesson from the project manager:
“He stopped briefly at a bridge overlooking the site so that I might view the crocodiles sunning on the banks of the river below. There were no guard rails.” Beyond the crocs were 20-foot jungle bushes to clear, which, Robinson says, “seemed to grow back as quickly as they were cut. Scarlet macaws and whitefaced monkeys watched me just as intently as I watched them.”
Robinson carved out a wonderful course, making the most of the site’s dramatic elevations, playing alongside fecund and exotic jungle growth, and still with the frequent gallery of scarlet macaws, white-faced monkeys and, to be sure, iguanas.
Nature is a big part of a visit to Costa Rica, a country that has been thinking green for longer than Al Gore. Indeed, it is the ecological flora and fauna that draws almost as many visitors here as the golf. Canopy tours were practically invented in Costa Rica—the canopy being the roof of the dense jungles, and the tour literally zooming through the deep growth, sometimes 200 feet above the ground, while attached to a zip line and harness. It takes a little nerve to strap on and push off, but the sensation is, well, sensational.
So, too, the master plan of Los Suenos Resort and Marina, which called for 600 of 1,100 acres to be set aside as a nature preserve, never to be developed. Two hundred were earmarked for the Marriott, leaving 300 acres to be built out by 2014. Of 1,000 keys, just over 500 have been sold, leaving a wide variety of home villas, lots, and condominium units available for whole ownership, fee simple, ranging from $800,000 to $5 million, with some resale properties priced from $350,000.
Vista Bahia, condominium units with 180-degree views of the course, resort, and bay, are under construction, to be conveyed in November. Construction was imminent as of press time on the luxury Vista del Sol residences, including infinity pools overlooking the Pacific.
Many residents are drawn by the outstanding marina and Pacific Ocean fishing opportunities. The marina has 200 wet slips, 100 dry, all full-service, full amenity.
ONE&ONLY PALMILLA RESORT
Mexico Jack Nicklaus has become such a commanding name in Latin American golf course design that it’s difficult to fathom that his first such course opened for play a mere 15 years ago in San Jose del Cabo, Baja California Sur, Mexico.
There were but 18 holes then, to be followed by nine more in 1999, all now under the aegis of the One&Only Palmilla Resort. And the original 18 helped to turn an area known mainly for its deep-sea fishing into a burgeoning golf outpost as well.
Fifteen years is not exactly antique in golfing terms; nonetheless, the course is in the midst of redoing all three nines, with the work proceeding in stages so 18 holes are open at all times. Practice facilities are being expanded and a new $4-to $5-million clubhouse is being built as well.
The resort is also undergoing renovation, this too something of a surprise, since a $90- million refurbishment by One&Only was completed in 2004, and it’s difficult to imagine how the property could be any more luxurious or inviting, still a magnet for celebrities as it has been since opening as an exclusive 15-room haven in 1956 (Oprah, Demi and Ashton, Leo DeCaprio, and Jennifer Aniston among the current set). Nonetheless, all of the rooms (now 150) are being redone, and the outdoor verandas of the plush villa suites soon will have their own private plunge pools.
A visitor could develop a yen for this kind of living, and the master plan for the Palmilla features some 750 high-end residences upon completion, in a varied menu of communities.
The golf and ocean view options represent the bargains at Palmilla, in a loose interpretation of the word—homesites in Palmilla Canyon, overlooking the second hole of the Ocean nine, begin at $275,000, but other sites in the Caleta Loma or Oasis Palmilla communities can rise to $3.9 million.
The oceanfront communities put the pedal to the medal or, more accurately, the foot directly into the sand. The 61 half-acre homesites in La Caleta, for example, offer custom homes from 4,500 square feet to over 14,000 and ranging from $3 million to more than $10 million.
The gated Villas Del Mar community is the most exclusive, with two- to five-bedroom floor plans that begin at $2.3 million and soar past $10 million. The views fairly beggar description, there are unmatched amenities, and membership in the private beach club, Club Ninety-Six, affirms the area’s taste for exclusivity.
