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Crystal Lagoons:Thinking Big, Building Big
Imagine a technology that can transform a once inhospitable coast with cold and polluted waters, natural dangers and rocky beaches into an idyllic beach paradise with turquoise water lagoons, white-sand beaches, palm trees and marinas. Over the past ten years, Crystal Lagoons Corporation, led by prominent Chilean real estate developer and biochemist, Fernando Fischmann, has developed such a technology, which has led to the construction of crystalline lagoons with optimum conditions for bathing and water-sports. Paradise can now be found almost anywhere.
Through an environmentally friendly technology now patented in 113 countries, Crystal Lagoon・s exclusive system, which maintains the quality and clarity of massive volumes of water, is revolutionising real estate projects worldwide, to bring high innovation value and ultimate profitability to even the most inhospitable land. Today, once unattractive coastal locations, second-row coastal real-estate, inland and urban terrains are being transformed into beach life locations that
were once previously thought impossible.
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The first project came about when Fischmann set out to build a vacation home real estate project, San Alfonso Del Mar in Algorrobo, on the central Chilean coast, a place where the waters are known for being cold and inhospitable. Fischmann・s mission was to build a place where his guests could bathe and practice watersports in a comfortable and safe environment, and whilst his dream was for something much bigger than a normal swimming pool, it soon became apparent that the technology simply did not exist. The only option available to him then was to use a conventional
swimming pool system, for which the cost of construction and maintenance would be nothing short of prohibitive for the size of the lagoon that he had envisaged. And so began his ten year journey to invent a cutting-edge technology that would produce and maintain water quality at low cost using a low energy filtration system using a pulse-based disinfection method requiring up to 100 times less chemical products than used in traditional swimming pools.
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Today the lagoon at San Alfonso Del Mar, Crystal Lagoon・s first project, which was built over a ten year period, stands at over a kilometre in length with an eight hectare surface area which holds over 250 million litres of water. Costing US$3.5 million with a maintenance bill equivalent to just a quarter of the maintenance cost of an average golf course, the lagoon is equivalent to 6000 eight metre long swimming pools and was listed in the 2007 Guiness Book of Records for being the largest swimming pool in the world. The 1300 residential unit property also boasts an infrastructure brimming with cutting edge technologies such as man-made white sand beaches, indoor and outdoor Jacuzzi tubs, solar heating, water currents and cascades, complete with a first-class ocean aquarium, home to more than 42 Chilean species which can be viewed along 25 metres of glass walls. And with projects expanding around the world, each one designed specifically to meet the unique requirements of every location, terrain and weather condition, property developers worldwide are being presented with innovative and dramatic landscape alternatives to attract investors and tourists alike.
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Construction of a sample lagoon to test the adaptability of the technology is performed on each site before final construction specifications are made available, and only once the design has been approved, are architectural and engineering specifications made available for the lagoon, beaches and docks. Developers have nothing to fear, as Crystal Lagoons also provides onsitesupervision of construction, and go the extra mile to provide all chemical products ?and training to all maintenance staff. Permanent telemetric control of the water・s physical chemical variables and the system・s operation valves assure the highest water quality standards that comply with the strictest health and chemical regulations.
Currently over 70 projects are underway around the world at various stages of development, notably in Panama, with the construction of a 7 hectare crystalline lagoon and 2,000 apartments in Playa Blanca, as part of a US$700 million strategic alliance with Fischmann and North American real estate agency LYNXS. Crystal Lagoons also recently announced plans for further developments across Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, including the US$60 million ：Guitar Project； in collaboration with Jordanian businessman, Ahmed Bani Hani and his company Sama Jordan, which will include 500 luxury home units and a 3.3 hectare artificial lagoon located 31 kilometres from Aman. Due for completion in 2011, it is the first of an impressive future portfolio that will not only include projects such as the Burj Dubai Lagoon in Dubai, Lagoa dos Ingleses at Minas Gerais, Brazil, Asia del Mar in Lima, Peru and two further projects in V Region, Chile, but also what promises, at 8.8 hectares, to become the world・s largest swimming pool in Egypt. Working with its local partners, Pyramids Plaza and Citystar Holding, the US$5.5 billion project is set to incorporate twelve giant
lagoons, 30,000 home units, five star hotels, a museum and a shopping centre. Indeed, the Citystars Lagoons at Sharm El Sheikh, lying slap bang in the middle of the Egyptian Desert just 3km from the Red Sea, seems to be synonymous with Fischmann・s original vision and the company・s ability to not only think big, but also to build big. And it doesn・t stop there: Sharm el Sheikh is only the first of four touristic projects that Crystal Lagoons has formally agreed with its local partner in a plan that will also see future developments in Hurghada and Alexandria. Indeed, by the end of 2009, Crystal Lagoons and its Egyptian partners will adventure on a new real estate project double the size and investment of Sharm El Sheikh. located on Soma Bay in the Red Sea, approximately 500 km south of Cairo and just below the Abu Soma peninsula. For a total investment of US$12 billion, the Soma Bay project is set to include construction of 18 giant lagoons, 10 hotels, 50,000 residential units, a commercial area, a waterpark and two 18-hole golf courses.
Thanks to what was just once a dream for Fernando Fischmann, it seems we really are talking about a revolution in the world・s tourist industry, where technology and innovation has come so far that the development of premium man-made beaches in totally different areas of the planet is limited only by developers・ imagination.