Phoenix group plans new city on Sea of Cortez
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9648801/
By Mike Padgett
Oct. 9, 2005
A new city with 15 miles of beach on the Sea of Cortez, a marina and a Grand Prix racetrack are planned in Sonora by an investment group with offices
in Scottsdale and Los Angeles.
The community, Liberty Cove, is designed for about 60,000 residences on 46,500 acres, or about 72 square miles, which is more than three times the
size of Manhattan. The first phase will have 5,750 acres along 1.5 miles of beach, said Craig Ricketts, chairman and chief executive of Rockingham
Asset Management Inc., the developer.
The property is north of Puerto Libertad, a fishing village of about 3,000. The location is less than 100 miles south of Puerto Pe?asco, also known as
Rocky Point.
The urban plan for Liberty Cove was signed by Sonora Gov. Eduardo Bours in December, 2004. Rockingham Asset Management, based in Los Angeles, opened
its Arizona office at Scottsdale Airpark in July.
Financing will be provided by Westridge Investment Group Inc., which is a 401(k)-approved private real estate investment trust, said Robert Chernick,
who is chief financial officer of Rockingham Asset and president of Westridge Investment Group.
So far, the REIT has received about $10 million from about 130 individual investors. Chernick said the goal is for investors to receive 10 percent,
paid quarterly, and the REIT is entitled to 20 percent of the profit of the development's first phase.
In a twist to traditional master-planned communities, the proposed Liberty Cove includes a Formula 1-style racetrack. The 5.3-mile course will be
built into the first-phase streets system for the town center along the beach prior to any other work.
Davy Jones of race-track consultant Fast One Inc. will oversee the design of Liberty One's Grand Prix race track. Jones is a professional driver who
placed first in the 24-hour Le Mans competition in 1996 and second in the 1996 Indianapolis 500.
Chernick said Liberty Cove will be marketed in metro Phoenix and Tucson first.
Ricketts said attorneys in Bryan Cave's Phoenix offices are preparing to file Liberty Cove's required paper work at the Arizona Department of Real
Estate within two months. State approval of the project is needed before the company can market itself in Arizona.
A market study of Liberty Cove's first phase concludes that it would have an appraised value of $227 million, if completed as planned. That is the
opinion of real estate appraiser Bruce Greenberg of Tucson. Greenberg also is a member of the Arizona-Mexico Commission.
"They have acquired a site the size of a city, and they're doing things very methodically," Greenberg said. "They're working with the government and
the people in the area. If they continue doing as well as they are, I think that they are going to pull it off."
Greenberg said Liberty Cove is only one of several major developments planned along the coast. And to entice further development, Mexico President
Vicente Fox in April approved a coastal highway that will be built through the Liberty Cove development. The road, planned between Mexicali and
Guaymas, is under construction, Greenberg said.
Near the Liberty Cove development is the site of a $500 million natural gas terminal proposed by DKRW Energy LLC and El Paso Corp. of Houston.
Construction is expected to start in 2006. Pipelines from the terminal would serve Sonora and later expand into Arizona.
Companies involved in Liberty Cove include:
First American Title Co., which is offering title insurance.
WRT, a San Francisco planning and design company.
GMA International, a Newport Beach, Calif., land planning company with experience in several major projects in Mexico and elsewhere.
Hall & Foreman Inc., a civil engineering company that has created the preliminary designs for Liberty Cove's first phase, and the locations for
the marina and the race track.
W.L. Bouchard & Associates Inc., an interdisciplinary group that employs dozens of Mexico's key engineers, scientists, planners and economists.
"All of the romantic juicy stuff that you see in movies of Mexico is GMA," Ricketts said. "I call them the romantic land planners."
Ricketts added the proposed community's features listed on his company's Web site and in his literature sound almost too good to be true.
"A lot of people look at this as dreams, but this is all very much reality," he said. "The people who get involved in this are going to do well."
Liberty Cove:
http://www.libertycovemexico.com
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