Many luxury housing developments are built around glamorous extras: a golf course, a private beach club, an exclusive restaurant. Set in the coastal jungle of western Mexico is another hyper-luxe offering, with a novelty extra: a pony named Karen.
Karen and 48 of her equine colleagues are the centerpiece of Mandarina, a billion-dollar residential resort bet being built on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in the Riviera Nayarit. Her developer is betting that the palatial stables—designed by a renowned architect—where two polo pros and their herd of athletic steeds are available to all residents, will put this luxury spot on the map.
“This is creating something,” said Borja Escalada, executive director of the company developing the property, RLH Properties. “You could be walking across the sand, or even trying to ride the waves, and suddenly you come back to the polo facility and you’re in a different place.”
The resort’s 260 hectares include a coastline that remains relatively untouched compared to its neighbor, Puerto Vallarta. Construction began in 2018. Phase One was a hyper-luxury hotel operated by One&Only, an international hotelier, and is now complete: 105 stand-alone bungalows. Each comes with a butler and costs between $1,300 and $31,000 a night.
Austere to the point of being monastic, the cabins are the model for Phase Two, One&Only Mandarina Private Homes, which recently laid the foundation stone. The residences, priced at $5.3 million — and much more — will also be operated by the hotel franchise, whose butlers will be on hand. Twenty-three of the 55 homes have been sold so far, some on sites that look like little more than free falls into the sea. These villas will be built on stilts, a complex process with the goal of disturbing as little as possible the least amount of forest.
Phase three will be a Rosewood hotel and private label residences, available for sale later this year.
A future eight-bedroom mansion was recently purchased for $17.5 million by David Malm, a Massachusetts investor. He said that he was not interested in polo, but that the horses were a “hook” for a future buyer, once he enjoys his vacation home. “It’s an amenity that people aspire to, a lifestyle,” he said. “Even if you don’t ride, they want to be a part of that club.”
The Mandarina isn’t just trying to attract polo players, though there are stables for rent if you bring your horses on vacation or to live. There are other goodies, like an omakase taco from Enrique Olvera, a chef whose restaurant in Mexico City is regularly ranked among the best in the world; a butterfly and mantis sanctuary with a resident biologist; and a spa.
On weekends, the stables host exclusive polo matches for residents and guests. You can see each period, called a chukker, drinking a Mandarina brand syrah next to the field in an Argentine-style restaurant also called a Chukker. There are riding boots and helmets on loan, and professional players to give lessons.
But right now, polo ponies don’t make a living. The guests have not come in large numbers to play polo.
“We didn’t expect the polo to see revenue on the first day and it has,” said Kappner Clark, RLH’s director of marketing. “But at this level of ultra-luxury, people are looking for unique experiences. And polo fits into that vision”.
By: SARAH MASLIN NIR
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6757747, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-06-12 20:50:05
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