Back in the heady days of 2006, a group led by MindSpring founder turned real estate developer Charles Brewer (fresh off the debut of the visionary Glenwood Park development) and other local real estate players like Stuart Meddin spent $26 million to acquire a slice of Costa Rica's northern Pacific coast. They called the 1,200 acre plot Las Catalinas, and set about creating a resort community built around a town marked by the hallmarks of New Urbanism amid the rocky coastline, beaches and lush tropical hills. They assembled a team including Andres 'Douglas' Duany, the Notre Dame architecture professor and designer of Seaside, Florida and Atlanta architecture firm Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates. Everyone knows what then happened to real estate, the market for second homes and the economy in general. But Las Catalinas has endured, and the vision Brewer and his partners had for a hybrid of Seaside and an Italian hill town has begun to emerge. Not sure how the real estate sales are going (looks like most homes hover between $500k and $1 million), but as resort development froze over the past few years, that they've continued to make progress is notable.
· Las Catalinas [official site]
· Tunnell-Spangler-Walsh & Associates- Las Catalinas portfolio
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