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PCS Development Inc., which is developing the Bahía de los Sueños resort community, is in negotiations with several hotel companies for a resort on the 4,300-acre property in Mexico's Baja California Sur. Located 35 miles southeast of La Paz and 100 miles northeast of Cabo San Lucas, Bahìa de los Sueños is slated to feature 600 custom homesites, 450 planned casita-style residences, a private airport, at least one resort hotel and a Tom Doak-designed golf course.
The region is popular with tourists for its fishing, swimming and wind surfing, the latter of which is particularly in the winte months when the wnds blow from the Pacific Ocean to the Sea of Cortez.
The golf course is Doak's first work in Mexico. Doak is best known for Pacific Dunes, his larger-than-life design at Bandon Dunes Resort in Bandon, Ore., and the stunning Cape Kidnappers resort course in New Zealand. He's also completing work on the highly-anticipated Old Macdonald Course at Bandon Dunes.
Doak's Bahìa de los Sueños course - called Bay of Dreams - is scheduled to be complete later this fall with a grand opening set for 2010. The course plays within feet of the Sea of Cortez, which Doak said presented some environmental challenges.
"The main environmental things that we dealt with down there is there is a pretty clear step back line from coast line, which is what they call the 'federal zone,''' Dok said. "The government actually owns that so you don’t actually do anything over that line. But once you get inland the only real rules that we had to deal with was maintaining the Cardón cacti. Some of them were really big so transplanting them was a real chore. And then finding a place to transplant them was a real chore because a lot of the property was already pretty thick with them
"Other than that there weren’t really many environmental issues that we would have come up with. No wetlands. Obviously you don’t want to try and divert any of the washes there just because you’re fighting nature and if you try to fight them they tend to get back to where they were anyway.''
The entire course, Doak said, is carpeted with Paspalum, a hybrid grass that has become popular in the Caribbean the few years because of holds up well against salt water and salt water spray.
"This is the first time I’ve built a golf course with Paspalum fairways and greens,'' Doak said. "Most newcourses in the Caribbean and Mexico and south Florida are going to Paspalum and it’s likely that you’ll see more of it on older courses in those areas as well.''
There is currently no hotel at Bahía de los Sueños, but there is a large family compound on the property - called Gran Sueño - that includes a large home and eight villas that is serving as a hotel of sorts
for property owners and some tourists as well.
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