Iona Napier
THE company behind the world’s largest outdoor swimming pool is diving into its first European project.
The real estate giant Crystal Lagoons – behind a pool in Chile some 11 football pitches in size – is bringing its expertise to Casares.
The €121 million luxury resort is set to bring the biggest pool in Europe, with 450 homes scattered around it.
The hectare and a half Alcazaba Hills Lagoon will create a huge area for swimmers and for other watersports.
Estimated to take eight months to build, the site is close to a development, once chalked in for a Spanish Disneyland.
Some 350 new properties are part of the plans to be built alongside an existing 100 properties, which have sat unsold since 2009.
Spelling great optimism for the abandoned development, the scheme plans to target wealthy European tourists, principally British, German and Dutch.
“With Crystal lagoons’ revolutionary technology, we can bring the idyllic beach lifestyle to anywhere in the world which could reactivate unsold and empty projects which were considered devoid of hope,” said regional director Sebastian Pillado.
The Estepona, Marbella and Mijas property landscape has seen a magnificent year with €376 million of investment scheduled in so far alone.
Casares town hall was unable to comment on this matter when approached by the Olive Press.
It will also cost €121 million to fill this monster with Spanish water prices being what they are….
For a moment I read that as Caceres and my mind immediately leaped to white elephant disaster scenarios….
Crystal Lagoons is a Dutch company founded in 2007. I wonder from where they get their investment money to pay those 121 million in an area where so many houses are still empty and unsold. Fortunately the Casares project in the moment seems to be an idea, not a project, as it does not show up on Crystal Lagoon’s worldwide project list.
A very important question – where is all this water to come from. It has to be clean water if people are to swim in it.
As people seem quite happy to swim in the septic tank known as the Mediterranean Sea, they won’t be too fussy about the cleanliness of this barmy pond.
White elephant