Condo Boom Transforms Beach Town
 El Universal
| | Experts say Rocky Point is poised to continue growing although at the moment, it´s a buyer´s market. |
Puerto Peñasco, Son. - In days past, RVs and tents were about the only forms of lodging dotting the long stretch of Sandy Beach, west of downtown Puerto Peñasco, aka Rocky Point. They´re now joined by a new, permanent and much taller presence: luxury condo towers.
Condo developments are turning Rocky Point - a town that started as home to shrimpers and fishermen and grew into a hideaway for U.S. expatriates and a college-student party spot - into a booming tourist center. No place symbolizes this growth more than Sandy Beach, the approximately 5-mile stretch of sand west of town that just a few years ago had no permanent homes.
Roughly 5,000 new condominium units have been built over the last five years in Rocky Point, which has attracted billions of dollars worth of private investment. Real estate experts say there are more than 25 existing developments and at least another dozen in the planning stages.
While development dots the shoreline all along the Gulf of California, notable projects near Peñasco include:
- Sandy Beach Resorts, a 5,000-acre master-planned development with several condo towers along the beach. Developers are looking at filling in large swaths of empty beach with hotels, single-family homes, shopping, golf courses, more condos and the city´s largest marina.
- Las Conchas beach, the site of a roughly 5,000-acre development of single-family homes, most of which are owned by U.S. citizens. Off-beach condo projects are planned there as well.
- Mayan Palace resort, roughly 20 miles east of downtown on a 4-mile stretch of beach, offers a golf course, tennis courts and spa services.
In 1994, the population was about 20,000. Today, it´s around 65,000. Thousands have come to the city in the last few years to work in construction, hotels, restaurants and real estate.
Development has brought change. Residents and visitors say the town is better in some ways, worse in others.
Linda and Guy Scholey moved about 11 years ago from Tucson, Arizona, to Rocky Point, where they opened the Old Port Galley restaurant. Back then, the town didn´t have a single resort.
"This town has really, really changed from a sleepy little fishing village to a real tourist town. Mexico is promoting it as the next Cancún," Scholey said. "The best part we see is a middle class emerging. There´s still poverty here, but it´s not anything like it was. Anybody who wants to work basically can work."
But signs of poverty still abound. In the city´s interior, trash lines some streets. Many residential streets are not paved and many buildings are in need of repairs. The interior of the city is a contrast to the manicured grounds of new developments.
Bill Berkley of Tucson recently returned from a trip to Rocky Point, where he rented a luxury condo on Sandy Beach. Berkley said he hadn´t visited in 10 years. Although the accommodations were much improved from his first visit in the late 1970s, he said he was disappointed.
"They have gorgeous million- dollar condos on Sandy Beach, but a short walk from these condos is terrible poverty and chuck- holes in the road," Berkley said.
Sandy Beach Resorts´ 220- unit Princesa project, with a starting price of US$119,000, sold out in about three years, from 1999 to 2002. About a year and a half ago, the 228-unit Sonoran Sun project sold out in less than eight hours. Average price: US$425,000. "We had a lottery," said Frank Jackson, CEO of SBR Realty, a subsidiary of Sandy Beach Resorts. "Eighty-three million (dollars) worth of condos in seven and a half hours."
Four years ago, the average price was about US$200,000, said Bruce Greenberg, who appraises Rocky Point property. The average new condo is worth about US$400,000, he said, though in the past year, price appreciation was "flat."
Experts say Rocky Point is poised to continue growing although at the moment, it´s a buyer´s market.
With 70 percent of buyers in Rocky Point´s new development coming from Arizona, the city has felt the slowing of real estate markets in the Tucson and Phoenix areas, Greenberg said.
While tourism and development in the area is important, it should also be sustainable, said Peggy Turk Boyer, director of the Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans, an environmental organization that operates in Rocky Point.
More planning is needed, Boyer said. Developers plan to build marinas on natural estuaries, which are nursing grounds for fish and nesting sites for migratory birds.
"The whole thing is pretty alarming," said Boyer, who lived there for 23 years before returning to Tucson in 2001.
Fishermen came to Rocky Point for the once-ample fishing; "tourists came for pristine beaches and tranquil lifestyle."
"What we all came there for is being lost in this development frenzy," Boyer said. |
Vallarta Weddings
Puerto Vallarta Real Estate | February 2007 
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