Yuma del Mar Oceanfront Property

12/04/2016

In citing in an earlier post that Xcaret is an inspiration as possible development for the portion of our land within the National Park, we also focus on how they managed to transform their rough coastline, very similar to ours in Boca de Yuma, making safe swimming areas, beaches & small boat harbors. You can see here a time lapse of Google maps over 10 plus years presenting the Xcaret – coast terraforming efforts – See more details here:
http://yumadelmar.com/jan2016/rough_coast_developments.html

12/04/2016

New site photos and short videos taken during a visit to the property.

Visit our website for all the new content. www.yumadelmar.com

12/04/2016

Update to web site, added content – reorganized sections and pages
We have added more site plan graphics, topography details and more inspiration photos in our “Possible Developments” Tab “Rough coastline development ideas” page.

12/04/2016

Yuma del Mar – for sale on specialized real estate web portals.

We have posted our listing for the sale of 4.2 million sq. meters of oceanfront property in over a dozen of international real estate web portal, beginning to actively pursue the sale of our property through this media. We have announced the sale price at US$8.55 /m2 or US$36 million.

12/04/2016

Ambar Cove cruise ship port opens.

Cruise fans now have somewhere new to go in the Caribbean. Amber Cove, a new port development along the north coast of the Dominican Republic, officially opened on Tuesday with the arrival of its first ship, the 2,754-passenger Carnival Victory. Development by cruise giant Carnival Corp. at a cost of $85 million, the 25-acre complex near the town of Puerto Plata is being billed as one of the biggest Caribbean port projects of the past decade and features a large area of bars, restaurants and shops. As can be seen in the photo gallery atop this story, it also has a sprawling pool area with a swim-up bar, water slides, zip lines and private cabanas…

Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2015/10/07/amber-cove-cruise-port/73501950/

As discussed in our prior post of April 2015. This is important to us as we consider Yuma del Mar location a very good choice for another major cruise ship port

12/04/2016

What to build inside the portion of the Yuma del Mar that is now a park?

The eastern part of our property has been declared National park. This presents particular challenges in order to find a compatible development. As one would suspect, the parks vocation is to protect the very land within its confines so any project will need to be close to nature, low impact, self-sustainable and help value the fauna and flora within.

So we looked around the world and found inspiration mainly in Costa Rica and Mexico, but chose Excaret eco-architectural park about an hour south of Cancun in Mexico as the most adequate type of development for us: occupies about 1 million sq. meters, on 1.25 km of rough coastline (very similar to ours) and they have developed it into one of the most prestigious and award winning eco-parks in the world. While, in addition to offering a nature immersive excursion, it also has a cultural and archeological discovery component to get the visitor to know the renowned lost Maya civilization. Now it receives well over 1 million visitors a year providing for a very lucrative business while complying and surpassing all the environmental, and conservation regulations.

We have prepared an illustrative master-plan that includes the superposition – to scale – of the Xcaret Eco-architectural park on our property. Its west limit is precisely where the Parque Punta Espada begins. Notice the huge area remaining for further expansion.

http://yumadelmar.com/jan2016/masterplan_1.html

12/04/2016

New Cruise ship port announced for Puerto Plata area
Carnival Cruise Lines' new Amber Cove port of call in the Dominican Republic will be ready for guests on Oct. 6, 2015, the cruise line said Friday. The line said it has scheduled 37 calls in Amber Cove from October 2015 to April 2016. Eight different ships will call there, including its Breeze, Glory, Splendor and Victory ships from Miami, the Valor and Sunshine ships from Port Canaveral, its Conquest ship from Fort Lauderdale and the Fantasy from Charleston, S.C.

Why is this relevant for Yuma del Mar property? Well upon preliminary análisis, the bay of Yuma and our property with over 4km of coastline could be an excellent choice for a Cruise Terminal. We are pursuing further studies…

Source:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/cruiselog/2014/12/15/dominican-republic-carnival-cruise-lines-new-port/20428849/

Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic will be ready for guests on October 6, 2016.

12/04/2016

Added new content – Yuma as cruise ship destination.

We finally completed a detailed in-house study on the possibility of building a cruise ship port and even a destination. It comprises technical and market information, maps, comparisons with other cruise ship ports, etc.

As we look for potential land buyers we add this to the list of land (oceanfront) attributes that could be attractive to Cruise Ship operators, port operators and hotels. These attributes include; very deep waters up to the coast, 5-10 meter coastline elevation, close to the Mona Passage (cruise line route), closer to it than La Romana and especially Santo Domingo. Would be attractive for many south east Caribbean cruise routes.

http://yumadelmar.com/jan2016/cruise_ship_port_marina.html

12/04/2016

Yuma del Mar, change in strategy to develop property. Revised website focused now on attracting land buyer.

Historically, the company had focused on finding investors to go into a joint venture to develop the property. It had some parts of a master plan including a phase 1 with 1,700 lots planned. A strategy to sell to middle class villa or condo buyers using Fractional Ownership as a means to offer affordable vacation solutions to middle class buyers who could not invest in single owned expensive villas, especially considering that an American family disposes rarely of more than a month a year for vacations.

But in today’s conjecture, it has been decided to abandon the joint venture business model and simply place the complete property for sale – as is - and let the incoming buyer determine its future development and use. This way we open the possibilities to any type of development, low-end, middle, luxury – all to be planned by the future buyer. In consequence, the website is now all about the land features, location, photos and what to see and do nearby. Old plans can still be found in “Possible Developments” tab as inspiration only.

12/04/2016

New highway Autopista del Coral Inaugurated 8 of august 2012
This new 70 km highway will facilitate swift and safe travel (in under 1 hour!) between La Romana and Punta Cana, two of the Dominican Republic’s most popular tourist destinations, cost was US$ 400 million to build and was officially inaugurated by President of the Dominican Republic, Dr. Leonel Fernández.

The impact for the Yuma del Mar property is huge. It places us at only 45 minutes from La Romana airport and 50 minutes from Punta Cana Airport

12/04/2016

Impact Yuma del Mar from decreed park: The new decreed Parque Nacional Punta Espada with an area of 82.35 sq. km, of which approx. 3 million sq. meters are within parcel P456 of 5.7 million sq. meters. Masstech Dominicana, S.A. owns 4.2 million sq. meters and fortunately our land had no approved project or construction under way and remains intact as virgin undeveloped land (aside form a few land squatters – typical in this country) So for any development within the park area, we must go through government Ministry of Environment approval in addition to Ministry of Tourism. Typically any eco-touristic project of low density, low environmental impact is acceptable. So of course no Miami strip type 40 story high rises or such can be built in that area!
http://yumadelmar.com/jan2016/parque_nacional_punta_espada.html

In 2009 part of a nationwide process created 29 protected areas, Parque Nacional Punta Espada now covers part of our land territory. Only government approved land use including ecologically friendly developments, ecotourism and such projects can be developed inside the park area.

12/04/2016

Jan 2011 - Creation of Parque Nacional Punta Espada
Back at the end of 2009, in one single decree No. 571-09 the Dominican Government created 29 protected areas and parks for a total of 2,619.26 square kilometers. In this unprecedented event the Dominican Republic passed from having less than 28.42% of protected areas to 33.80% of its territory, placing it in top percentile at 10.82 (from 13.85) of countries having most protected areas in the world. The decree is controversial as the government did not observe its own laws dictating that prior to creating the areas, public consultancy and social and commercial impact studies had to be made. As a result industries such as mining, cement factories, etc. now within parks or protected areas have illegal operations subject to fines! Needless to say the government has a terrible track record when it comes to expropriation and fair compensation, there are still claims from land owners whose land got swooped up into parks 30 years ago! So this magic wand – draw circles on a map – park creation process (land appropriation) is going to be controversial for some time…