BETTER HOMES NEWSLETTER

Local Meets Central Government with Guanacaste Plan

Rodolfo Downing, a presidential delegate in Cañas, approached Minister Rodrigo Arias to shake his hand warmly.

“In my 50 years in politics I don’t remember ever attending a lock up meeting like this one,” said the white haired gentleman with the heartfelt grin.

Friday’s encerrona, or lock-up meeting which brought together many of President Óscar Arias’ cabinet, including the Minister of the Presidency Rodrigo Arias, the Ministers of Tourism, Public Works and Transport, Health, Housing, and Security reflected a clear message from the central government.

Guanacaste, a not-so-long-ago forgotten province known for its high levels of poverty and technological backwardness, is now the Arias administration’s darling.

Hanging on Guanacaste’s broad plains is Oscar Arias’ ability to transform a country that has been falling behind in the last decade in world lists that once applauded it for its advanced education and health policies, and whose economic and political stability make it the “Switzerland” of Latin America.

At the start of his term, Dr Arias said that to pull the country out of its stupor, 600,000 new jobs had to be created and that could only happen if the investment in tourism paid off.

And last week in a hotel on the outskirts of Liberia, the Government made it clear Guanacaste is synonymous with tourism.

“With this meeting we are doing something simple but very important for the province of Guanacaste, so that the benefits and the opportunities of the commercial openings that we are working on can reach the live forces of the area,” said Rodrigo Arias Minister of the Presidency, and Óscar Arias’ brother.

“We wanted to revise government actions to take advantage of opportunities --- more infrastructure, a greater focus on education.

“We want to give priority to these issues,” Mr Arias said. “If we make an effort, it has to be parallel to social growth. All that boom has to translate into less poverty.”

But what they really wanted to do was a gathering of the clan. To bring together all the mayors of the province, to find common problems and try to develop some common solutions. On paper at least, there is some hope.

There are 11 mayors. Ten of them are Partido Liberación Nacional, or PLN. Just like the central government.

“Ten of the 11 Liberación mayors are here,” said Juan Marín Quiros, Mayor of Hojancha.

“What I ask for is political will,” he said, as if echoing what might be achieved.

He spoke of regulatory plans, the documents that dictate how a cantón can be developed.
 
“If there aren’t any regulatory plans, we won’t be able to generate income,” he said. “And yet we’ve had a regulatory plan in INVU (the Institute of Housing and Urban Development) for three years.

“We’ve spent 30 million colones (about $58,000) and INVU and SETENA won’t resolve anything. We can’t even get to the stage of a public audience.”

Regulatory plans, particularly along the Pacific coast, particularly in the rapidly developing beachfront towns, have become popular these days. Perhaps because they are so rare.

“I am looking for planning that orders the accelerated tourism development in the region,” said the Minister of Tourism, Carlos Ricardo Benavides, in a press release after the lock-up.

“Just in the last month the increment in construction permits was at 108 per cent,” he said. “Most of them respond to tourism and high-end housing projects.

“This year we plan to elaborate three plans in the sectors of San Miguel Coyote, Playa Hermosa Bahía Azul and Avellanas-Junquillal.”

The meeting heard the ICT has forged a strategic alliance with the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT), whereby they will spend 300 million colones (about $580,000) on a signage campaign.

The campaign is designed to guide visitors to the most popular tourist areas in Guanacaste. They will spend an additional 25 million colones ($48,000) on beach signs warning of potential dangers in Naranjo, Hermosa, Conchal, Flamingo, Grande, Tamarindo, Samara, Carrillo and within Lake Arenal.

The Minister of Transport, Karla González, told the mayors there would be a tender in place to build a $13 million terminal at Daniel Oduber International Airport in Liberia.

The terminal would operate under a concession.

“Any public works concession is slow,” Ms González conceded. “We’re trying to come out with the most simplified tender.

“At least five companies have expressed interest,” she added. “We will have pre-offer meetings at the end of March in the General Secretariat of the Ministry.”

“We have police stations under construction,” said Fernando Berrocal, the Minister of Public Security. “We have achieved this with ICT funds put aside with the Association of Concessionaires of Papagayo.

“We are doing three delegations. One will be at the entrance to the airport, another in Playa Panamá and one north of Papagayo. There will be a better police presence.

“This has to be a joint effort between municipalities and private developers,” Mr Berrocal said.

“There’s no reason why we can’t do the same we’ve done with Papagayo in Tamarindo or Sámara. This is the only way we can make a dent in the security problem.”

(Originally published by The Beach Times)

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Guanacaste to Get Big Boost in Hotel Rooms

Nine Hotel Projects And Up to 3500 Rooms Planned.

Guanacaste’s northern Pacific coast will have an additional 3500 high-end hotel rooms within the next three years, according to at least nine major hotel and resort projects either under way, or being planned.

Hotel chains like Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, Regent International Hotels, Rosewood Hotels and Resorts, JW Marriott, Aman Resorts International, the Ritz Carlton, One and Only Resorts and the Hilton Hotels Corporation have all either broken ground, are in the permitting stage, or are negotiating build hotels from Hacienda Pinilla, south of Tamarindo, to Peninsula Papagayo.

The hotels and resorts represent a combined investment of nearly one billion dollars in a strech of Costa Rica’s coastline less than 60 kilometers (about 38 miles) long.

Most are planning up-market, five-star, hotels and resorts, which would relieve the region’s critical room shortage and create anywhere between 7000 and 13,000 jobs.

“There is an extraordinary amount of jockeying for position right at the moment,” said one hotel insider this week. “And the industry loves it because of the severe shortage of hotel rooms during the high season.”

A survey last year by the Cámara Nacional de Turismo (CANATUR) of 60 small, medium-sized and large hotels right across the country showed about 45 per cent of requests for rooms were being turned down during the high season.

In fact, the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) estimates they need about 49,000 rooms to accommodate all the tourists coming to Costa Rica.

“….which means there must be 18,192 new rooms to be distributed amongst the existing tourist base and the construction of new accommodations,” it found in its latest report.

And with most hotels in Guanacaste reporting occupancies in the past three months running between 90 and 95 per cent, the trend is being felt here.

In fact, Sildelau Salcedo, General Manager of the Paradisus Playa Conchal Resort in Brasilito, Guanacaste, estimated they rejected as much as three per cent of their business. He says they lost about $2.2 million in two years.

“We found we were rejecting a lot of business because in the high season we simply did not have the rooms to give customers,” he said this week.

Last month, and a little ahead of schedule, the hotel opened another 102 rooms, bringing capacity to 406 rooms. The rooms, an additional, 120-seat restaurant, a new pool and a conference center represented a total investment of nearly $20 million.

Desarrollos Hoteleros Guanacaste, S.A, the parent company of the Playa Conchal resort and golf course development, says they will also add a second hotel, probably beginning sometime this year. It will include 200 to 250 rooms and could be operational within 30 months.

“In fact our master plan calls for two more big hotels, and one medium-size or boutique hotel,” said Ana Saborío, Chief Executive Officer of DHG.

“We have been working on permits, designs and how we might structure a deal for some time,” she said. “We have had conversations with several hotel groups, but these kind of negotiations take time. I can’t say exactly when we will start building.”

The ICT says there are 6569 rooms in 299 hotels in northern Guanacaste and 1414 rooms in 130 hotels towards the south. It counts 4571 rooms in 294 hotels on the Central Pacific.

For its part, the Guanacaste Chamber of Tourism believes it needs, as a matter of urgency, more than 1000 additional rooms. If that is the case, then it is about to get more than it bargained for.

Grupo Roble, the El Salvador-based conglomerate, broke ground late last year and has now finished moving 50,000 cubic meters of dirt around on the five hectares of land upon which will be built a JW Marriott hotel. Foundations for the 310-room resort, inside the Hacienda Pinilla complex, will begin this month.

Originally, the developers had planned a first phase of 180 rooms, but quickly announced 250 rooms. Now they are building 310.

“They decided to build everything all at the same time,” said Mauricio Estrada, General Manager of Hacienda Pinilla this week.

“Rooms are a big problem in the area and I guess the developers see the potential for hotel rooms,” he added. “They have a very aggressive construction plan. They want to be open in 2008.”

It is not just hotel rooms. Most developments are now incorporating condominiums and villas, which the developers then manage. The Grupo Roble project is no different – it will include 200 condominiums.

Developers behind the giant Hyatt Hotel and Resort to be built in Brasilito are also looking to break ground on their $300 million project early this year.

Phase one will include all 320 hotel rooms of what will be known as the Hyatt Regency Azulera Resort and Spa, as well as the Greg Norman-designed, 18-hole, golf course.

Representatives of what is known as the Rosewood Project will be in Guanacaste later this month, for what is now believed to be a completed deal.

The deal has been on the table for more than six years, but is now understood to be signed, for 60-hectares (150 acres) of property on Playa Guachipelin, owned by Roger Hall, of Hallmark Properties, a developer out of California.

Certainly, a master plan of the area, cost analyses, and construction schedules are ready and waiting for the 80-room hotel, which will include 12 deluxe suites and one presidential suite. The project was to have been two phases, but will now go ahead as one, and include an additional 60 villas of two, three and four bedrooms. There will be a further 20 estate lots plus a spa and a fitness center.

Both Aman Resorts International and One and Only Resorts are understood to be in negotiations with Revolution LLC to site a resort on 216 hectares (about 535 acres) of land in Playa Hermosa.

Steve Case, Chairman of Exclusive Resorts, Co-Founder of America Online, Director of Case Foundation and owner and Chairman of Revolution LLC bought the land for a reported $42 million in 2005.

But one of the most ambitious projects is that by the RIU Hotel Chain, a 53-year-old Spanish chain, which has bought 240 hectares (about 600 acres) fronting Matapalo in northern Guanacaste.

RIU paid an estimated $26 million for the land, and have begun clearing.

Sources close to the deal say the group will build three hotels, with a total of up to 2000 rooms. They want to begin building this year.

Late last year, two Minnesota developers announced they are to build a $120 million, 150-room luxury hotel on Guanacaste’s Papagayo Peninsula.

Richard Pakonen and Blaine Kirchert are to team up with Regent International Hotels and the respected Costa Rican architect, Ronald Zurcher, to build and manage what will be known as the Regent Punta de Papagayo. It will include the hotel, 86 condominiums, 20 luxury estates and a giant spa. The complex will rest on some of the last remaining concession land within the Papagayo tourism project known as Polo Turí­stico.

(Originally published by The Beach Times)

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Liberia Airport Statistics Go Sky High in January

More than 44,000 passengers came through Liberia’s Daniel Oduber International Airport in January, shattering all previous records.

Aviation and tourism officials, who had optimistically predicted a modest ten per cent increase on last January’s passenger traffic were caught by surprise by the 24 per cent increase from the same month last year.

“This kind of increase is very good news for us,” said Mauricio Cespedes, Executive Director, of the Guanacaste Chamber of Tourism.

“We had a meeting at the airport this week to discuss the idea of a concession to run the facility, and to decide what priority we should place on that,” he said.

“These figures certainly help us.”

Only once before, since officials began accurately collating airport statistics in 2001, has the number of passengers exceeded 40,000. That was in March of last year when 43,900 passengers arrived and departed the facility.

The announcement was a great start for the industry which saw figures slump for the first time in October last year, dropping 19 per cent. They now believe passenger movement in February will be around 46,000, up again, and could hit 50,000 in March. They expect nearly 400,000 for the full year.

As many as a million passengers could use the airport by 2017, the same statistics show.

The aviation industry’s future estimates for the country’s fastest growing airport came as the tourist industry confirmed 351,515 passengers had used the airport in 2006 --- 18 per cent more than the previous year.

The biggest user of the airport in January was Delta Airlines which carried 11,692 passengers, closely followed by Continental with 11,422 passengers. American Airlines carried 8053. There are now 40 direct, scheduled and charter flights between Liberia and the United States each week.

The Costa Rican government announced late last year it would up-grade and operate Liberia’s Daniel Oduber International Airport under a concession agreement.

The Minister of Public Works and Transport, Karla González, said she expected about $13 million to be spent on upgrading the terminal facilities, taxi-ways bringing aircraft to and from the runway, and parking aprons.

The tender document, outlining all the requirements of the concession, would be released next month.

“The airport concession process is an urgent issue,” Mr González said in making the announcement.

“In March we plan to put the concession out to tender so that the airport can start operating in accordance with the needs of the region.”

The tender will only include land-side facilities, such as the terminal area --- something local aviation officials had argued for. Others wanted to see the whole airport put out to concession, but Ms González seemed to quash that idea.

“All the operational aspects of the airport will remain in government hands,” she said. “We want to continue doing that. We will also continue to have responsibility for security.”

The exact design for the airport, which would come from the government, is still being discussed, but it is likely to be a terminal of between 8000 and 10,000 square meters, including offices, ticketing, check-in, arrival and departure gates, duty free shops and restaurants.

While Daniel Oduber Airport gets busier, Juan Santamariá International Airport continues to lose traffic. Liberia finished 2006 17.7 per cent higher than the previous year, while San José dropped 6.4 per cent to 2,656,072 arrivals and departures. That meant total traffic dropped about 118,000 passengers for the year, which is one of the first true measures that tourism in Costa Rica is dropping slightly.

Experts are still mystified as to the reason, although most point to a combination of factors --- poor roads, rising crime, the cost of gasoline and therefore airline tickets, plus the general increase in costs, particularly in Guanacaste.

Costa Rica’s neighbors, Panama and Nicaragua, have both been investing heavily in tourism, anxious to cash in on the lucrative Central American tourism market.

(Originally published by The Beach Times)

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$15M Papagayo Marina Breaks Ground

There are well documented 3,000 year-old land routes through Mesoamerica , but of sea routes, very little is known. What is likely is that peoples of Chibcha origins (the tribes that extended from the Colombian northeast through Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras) settled the Guanacaste coast thousands of years ago. They populated the coastline along Bahía Culebra, and reaped the ocean’s bounty without straying far from the coast. We know they must have been seafarers because there are missing links. Archeological pieces have been found in Guanacaste which are outside known terrestrial commercial routes from as far away as the Chiapas region in central Mexico.
It’s also likely maritime routes existed, but the humidity of the tropics has a way of disintegrating organic elements like woods, textiles and fibers. What is known is that in Manzanillo Bay in the depths of Bahía Culebra, there was once an Indian settlement. The peoples lived on a rocky face overlooking the beach and could probably watch the giant rooster fish send panicked schools of jureles or jacks skimming across the calm sea, getting trapped in the rock estanques or fishing traps, as the tide receded from the coast.
The people are long gone, buried next to pottery and jade. All that remains on the beach are curved lines of rock where the fishing traps used to be.
Five hundred years on, the fish still fly. Five hundred years on, a new settlement is taking hold.
The Marina Papagayo has broken ground. You can read more on page six.

Pre-Columbian ruins and rare coral reefs were just a couple of the obstacles that had to be overcome by the developers of the $15 million Marina Papagayo, to be built on Playa Sombrero in Bahía Culebra, Guanacaste.

But finally, after a three-and-a-half year odyssey, the 318-slip marina , just the second along the country’s Pacific coast, and the first port of entry into Costa Rica from the north, broke ground earlier this month.

Roberto Kopper Orlich, Director of the Marina Papagayo Project since the start, has much to smile about, for the moving of the first stone was something of an apotheosis.

It involved navigating through environmental pitfalls as diverse as how to treat waste water without dumping the remains into the ocean, how to move hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of land-fill without affecting marine ecosystems, and how to preserve the ruins of Pre-Columbian fishing traps.

“We can’t do development as if we were an island. There must be synergies between conservation and development,” Mr Kopper explained during a tour of the site.

The pristine beauty of the property is reflected in the aquamarine waters around the jetty under construction. A meter long dark-backed rooster fish swam unhurried, centimeters below the surface. Minutes later a panicked school of silvery jurules or jacks swooshed over the still waters towards the shore.

Ironically, the fish were being corralled onto the ruins of Pre-Columbian estanques or ponds, one of the carefully considered impediments of building a marina in Playa Sombrero.

The estanques were circular stone holding ponds that worked as fishing traps with the tides. They were once stone walls maybe as high as a meter that formed natural enclosures.

What remains are piles of stones in 20-meter-long semi-circular lines which can only be seen at certain times of the year during extreme low tides.

Dr Silvia Salazar González, the project’s archeologist, explained there are 26 remains of these natural holding tanks in the bay and five at the marina site.

“The bay is a natural port. It has been used for centuries and in Pre-Columbian times,” said Dr Salazar. “Archeological remains from other regions further north have been found and the biological richness is tied to the adaptation of human settlements.”

“Because the ruins are not tied to archeological finds, it is difficult to date them,” says Dr Salazar, adding it is assumed that they date from 500 AD and were probably built by peoples of Chibcha origin.

The marina project has embraced the historical implications, and has made the ponds the pillar of the project.

“It is the first time an archeological resource has been incorporated into development,” says Dr Salazar pointing to the two ruins that will be at the center of the marina. The area will be dredged and the fishing tramp ruins will be visible year-round.

Sigfrido Jiménez, museum specialist of the project, oversaw the conservation efforts.

“We proposed a conservation plan, as opposed to a restoration,” he said. “The idea is to stop the deterioration of the site and to promote education through the sharing of archeological history with the visitors.”

Ponds or tramps, four to five of them at the eastern side of the marina, will be preserved as a sub-aquatic heritage. It’s the first such conservation work in the country.

“The ponds have been mapped and covered by a geo-textile sheet which is permeable and maintains humidity conditions,” explains Mr Jimenez. “It will then be covered by a four-meter-high fill. There will be no construction atop, but a boardwalk area of pavers.”

Since most of the archeological sites in the Bay have been ransacked by treasure hunters or “guaqueros” for centuries, little remains to be uncovered. But at the marina site, the archeological history of the site will be documented and presented in a Visitor’s Information area.

“This will generate ties to the heritage of the area,” said Mr Jiménez.

If the maintaining of history was at stake, the environmental heritage became a greater hurdle to overcome for the marina project.

There is a 200-square-meter patch of coral reef some 150 meters from the outer edge of the marina that harbors the only reported coral in the eastern Pacific, the Leptoseris papyracea reef, and the only living population of the Fungia (Cycloseris) curvata in the world. All this, at a relatively shallow depth of five meters.

Giovanni Bassey Fallas, the project’s environmental advisor, and an expert on coral reefs, was called in to address the issue.

“There aren’t any critical ecosystems in the Bay nor endangered species in the bay,” he said, “but we are concerned about the coral reef.”

“We are taking measures not to affect the reef during the construction. We have put in place anti-turbulence curtains to block materials from the construction that can stop sediment and debris from reaching the reef or other ecosystems,” says Mr Bassey.

“But we are monitoring the coral. It’s our jewel to protect,” he says, adding that the fragile area will be cordoned off and strictly monitored.

Mr Bassey knows he’s got a tough battle, for the coral systems along the Pacific are suffering from a general whitening of the colonies.

“The colonies are all already affected due to modified marine conditions like the El Niño phenomenon,” he explains adding that the reefs thrive under strict temperature ranges.

The Marina Papapayo project began innocuously enough in June of 2003 with the filing of a preliminary environmental study form before SETENA, the National Technical Secretariat of the Ministry of Environment. 

This, after studies showed that amongst nine sites, Bahía Manzanillo was the most apt with ideal depths of up to 32 meters and beating out other candidates such as the beaches at Nacascolo South and Bahía Huevos.

“Bahía Culebra is known to have been used by US warships until well after World War II for its depths,” Mr Kopper pointed out. “Playa Sombrero is the best qualified location for the floor, wave, and cover conditions were optimum at the site.”

The oceanographic studies were done by CIMAR, the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias del Mar y Liminologia or Oceanic Research Center.

Mr Kopper also traveled extensively to other marinas in the world to get first-hand knowledge of the worst that could happen. For example, in the US he first visited marinas that had been affected by natural disasters.

“When we do get hurricanes in Costa Rica, the most we have gotten on this coast is heavy precipitation,” he added.

The first stage of the project contemplates heavy land movement, 170 docking slips, and a 1,500-square-meter commercial area which includes customs and an immigration office.
The marina is expected to inaugurate its first phase in January 2009.

The second stage will have 212 additional slips and180 spots for storage of vessels. This last will be in conjunction with a crane-like machine to lift boats from the water and store them.

Mr Kopper awaits the heavy machinery from the firm engineering firm MECO, which is expected on the site in the next days. And therein may lie the greatest challenge --- a 44-hectare concession, where around 300,000 cubic meters of fill is needed.

Jorge Vargas, construction manager for Construction Management Services (CMS), says a third of that may come from the dredging of the site. The Ministry of the Environment and Energy (MINAE) took almost a year to give the go ahead.

If he were to do it all again, what would he change?

“All we would want for the future is that the times for permits, established by law, are respected but that the processes not be changed,” said Mr Kopper.

This may be good news for other marinas to come, for just within the Polo Turístico de Papagayo’s Master Plan, there’s room for two more marinas.

Article by The Beach Times.

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New Tourist Signage To Guide Visitors, Announced

Tourists will soon find it easier to move around the country and without getting lost or having to stop continually to ask for directions, as the ministra de Transportes, Karla González, annnounced yesterday the placing of some 1.300 "tourist signs" along the major highways.

The new signs are specifically geared to helping tourists get to and from their destinations, like providing direction and distance between points. The cost of the signs is estimated at ¢300 million colones (us$582.500), and will also provide tourists with information on monuments, parks, and tourist centres along the routes.

The new signs will be coffee coloured and will use symbols to indicate surf, beaches, fauna, tourist services, etc. The signs will also indicate the nearest hospitals, police stations and basic tourist information for both foreigners and residents.

The first signs will be erected in the San José - Peñas Blancas and San José - Limón routes and routes to the Guanacaste beachers, the Nicoya Peninsula and Quepos/Manuel Antonio, the main tourits routes today. Minister González added that in addition to the new signs, the road demarcation will be widened to include all the major routes in the country, but will all depend on the financial resources available after the first phase of this ambitious project.

Minister González said that in addition to visitors knowing where they are headed, it is important that they also enjoy some of the important points and adventures of the country.

According to the minister, money is also being invested in providing good roads and looking for "legal" and creative ways to better maintain the roads, including reaching agreements with hotel and tourist operators, without incurring additional costs.

The ministro de Turismo (Tourism minister), Carlos Ricardo Benavides, added that the new signs will be made of galvanized steel instead of the aluminum and other metals, that unfortunately is part of the Costa Rican reality, are stolen. To that end, Benavides said that he had been giving consideration to a plan to reach an agreement with area hotels to keep and eye and maintain signs within 200 metres of them, though he offered no details on the idea.

Minister Benavides said that the country cannot permit visitors to lose great amounts of time trying to find their way to the national parks, beaches, etc.

The president of the Cámara de Turismo (tourism chamber), Gonzalo Vargas, added that the move is an important one, but the country still lacks in infrastructure.

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