Buying the Paradise
How many hotels in paradisiacal locations do not suffer the consequence of the developing approach previous to the Great Recession? How many hotels have not sold views without registering them beforehand in the Property Registry? That competitive advantage of some locations above others, apparently free, always found expression in the graphic splendor of a tourism brochure or a website with appealing colors, without any more intrinsic cost than having opened a window towards the mountain or tasking the architect with an infinity pool.
There were those, absorbed in the panorama, who believed in paradise thanks to a heavenly image. However, the postcard ended up having a price: the requalification of the terrain on behalf of the current mayor, urged to feed the municipal coffers, if not more personal needs. Moreover, all without losing sight of the obstacles in tackling regional decentralization — that is to say municipal autonomy.
Then, after the neighboring property has been requalified in a profitable real estate business, and housing development has sprouted with townhouses, is when the market laments ensue. «They have stolen my view,» «They have asphyxiated my business,» «They have surrounded the hotel with housing developments, asphalt, noise, garbage, and syringes.»
When this happens, there is no other option left than conveniently valuing the view and… buying it. Buying passage? Why yes: buying mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, sky, and land so no one can steal the views of the hotel — if the business mainly sells to the sensible fibers of the retina, the optic nerve.
Very sane mad people have been engaged in this endeavor, in numerous countries around the world. But none so much as the billionaire North American Douglas Tompkins (1943–2016). With the power of money and visual acuity (his business nowadays is the views), he became the public enemy number one of Chile and Argentina. And he was on his way to being so in Paraguay. Founder of Esprit and North Face, Tompkins resolved to purchase no less than 550,000 hectares in Patagonia, which is equivalent to half the country. Or cutting Chile in two. His entrepreneurship was engaging to protecting this vast southern territory from the greed of the salmon industries, the forest plantations (the second line of companies who operate in the Amazon), and the hydroelectric plants. These big multinationals signed up at the last minute for renewable sources. Now they are enthusiastically supported by ecological movements that dream of a country of windmills and reservoirs in detriment of the more landscape-worthy and efficient nuclear energy.
Tompkins bought several properties in Patagonia for the last 30 years to protect it from the landscape blanchers and the ecology-obsessed from the dams. Many of these hectares have been reverted to the Chilean State on the guarantee of promoting a web of national parks in them. Tompkins was opposed to asphalting the territory, and that puts the brakes on the industrial development of Patagonia, it is true. The quixotic act of buying landscapes is incomprehensible even for the official estates of the Andean country, however much their legal system protects private property. The lack of social protection culture and the national factor — Douglas Tompkins was a foreigner — increases the reservations. Our modern Robin Hood of the environment continued in his effort to obstruct the expropriation of his lands to build a coastal road that unites the two sliced portions of the country.
One of his most applauded projects by tourists with a natural sensibility has been the creation of a lodge with only six bedrooms. It is like a shelter of copper covers, stone claddings, polyurethane panels and mineral wool, furniture made of recycled wood from sheds, and geothermal provisions in the Chacabuco Valley. Tompkins got an impoverished cattle ranch of 78,000 hectares that he delighted himself in buying to “make a business of the landscape.” That is a real example to follow by future hoteliers. That is the model designed to prevent from the mayors in need of land resources because there’s no better way of preserving the natural environment than making a business of it.
Other magnate friends of Tompkins, such as the British Joseph Lewis, owner of Levi’s clothes brand; the North American Ted Turner, founder of CNN; and the Italian Luciano Benetton, the most prominent private landowner in Argentina, are buying all the scenery they can.
Fernando Gallardo |
