# The Old Folks are Coming! The Old Folks are Coming!!



## Longford (May 25, 2012)

It will sound to some like a 'pie in the sky' project, but promoters of a new US$400 Million housing development said to be geared to seniors/retirees in Ajijic (Lake Chapala area) have unveiled their plans for 3,045 hi-rise condominiums and 426 townhouses. "Not in our backyard! is the reaction by some expats. Maybe most who are living in the area. I'm having a difficult time envisioning how Ajijic is going to handle the infrastructure challenges if the project actually materializes.

Read more: Guadalajara Reporter: Plan for high-rise senior city whips up controversy


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## modeeper (Mar 21, 2015)

If bored they can start a mud club.


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## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

It will not be in Ajijic. It will be in Chapala Centro, opposite the MonetCarlo hotel. 
I think it is a pie in the sky dream that will not even get damp; certainly not wet.


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## TurtleToo (Aug 23, 2013)

If the artist's rendering is at all accurate, the project is out-of-scale and a very poor fit with both the natural and the man-made environments. (And pretty darned ugly, to boot.) A "radical transformation," indeed! 

It's not my backyard, but I wouldn't wish this upon anyone's (non-urban) backyard. It simply isn't designed for the setting in which they want to build.

.


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## makaloco (Mar 26, 2009)

Nor does it seem well conceived for the target market. Most fellow seniors I know want to live in single-story detached homes, not high-rises. Don't get me started on the casino and "massive shopping mall". Yuck.


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## Meritorious-MasoMenos (Apr 17, 2014)

TurtleToo said:


> If the artist's rendering is at all accurate, the project is out-of-scale and a very poor fit with both the natural and the man-made environments. (And pretty darned ugly, to boot.) A "radical transformation," indeed!
> 
> It's not my backyard, but I wouldn't wish this upon anyone's (non-urban) backyard. It simply isn't designed for the setting in which they want to build.
> 
> .


Don't underestimate Mexicans reaching for the stars. Just think what they've done in creating the spanking new Santa Fe skyline, dozens of gleaming sky scrapers in what had been dismal landfill on the outer edges of the D.F. I know it has many critics and it currently has a lot of vacancies but business folks, both Mexican and international, seem to be spending increasing time there. Also, the project went through hard times, with false starts and poor starts, but the Mexicans involved didn't give up, and finally succeeded, even if not everyone's cup of tea.

I used to travel a lot between the DF and Toluca before Santa Fe was built, and the contrast to today is stunning. Once you headed out from ritzy Reforma, it used to be desolation row until you hit La Marquesa, which isn't exactly a foreigner's delight either.

It reminds me a bit of Tysons Corner in VA. When I moved to that sainted state, I had never heard of Tysons but wound up living there a while. I was stunned to learn it had more office space than Miami or Denver, and of course far more than DC. At the time, city planners had spent all of their energy putting in infrastructure to get commuters in and out of DC - subways, highways, but it turned out that 21st century commuter patterns had much greater traffic going between Virginia and Maryland, with most new workers going no where near DC.

Also, aren't a lot of seniors in the U.S. selling their suburban homes and moving into inner cities into apartments where they don't have to worry about lawns and even cars? 

Anyway, that article didn't say the project was for foreign retired people, that I saw. If it's for 3,045 apartments, that's probably for 6,000 people, which might be more important than the 300 expats who showed up to boo.


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## makaloco (Mar 26, 2009)

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Also, aren't a lot of seniors in the U.S. selling their suburban homes and moving into inner cities into apartments where they don't have to worry about lawns and even cars?


Possibly, but that's different from living in a self-contained community in a more remote location. A city like Boston or Mexico or Paris is inherently interesting, with many cultural as well as commercial attractions and activities for all ages and budgets. This Chapala project sounds more like Dubai Lite with better scenery.


> Anyway, that article didn't say the project was for foreign retired people, that I saw.


"… all geared to accommodate a rising wave of baby boomer retirees" (first paragraph) plus the fact that they were presenting it to an expat audience.


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## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

I think the whole shebang was either a scam attempt or an April Fool joke on the local expats.
Todays news is that there were no geologic or geographic studies, no land transfers, no permits, no licenses, nothing but a marketing presentation. Maybe just a trial balloon.


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

The project has been "proposed." I think the local/state officials have confirmed that though permits have not been applied for nor have detailed drawings and environmental studies been provided ... the government(s) have expressed support in concept for the project. Lots and lots of legwork still needs to be done and the community meeting was one piece in a large puzzle. I doubt the project will (i) attract the financial backing to move forward, and (ii) satisfy whatever environmental regulations their might be. It doesn't surprise me that someone would "float" a project idea such as this given the fact that baby-boomers are starting the move into retirement (in the USA), though the price-point for the condominiums seems a bit high to me considering it's retirees (Mexican or Expat) who are supposed to be the intended market for the sales of the units.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

Meritorious-MasoMenos said:


> Don't underestimate Mexicans reaching for the stars. Just think what they've done in creating the spanking new Santa Fe skyline, dozens of gleaming sky scrapers in what had been dismal landfill on the outer edges of the D.F. I know it has many critics and it currently has a lot of vacancies but business folks, both Mexican and international, seem to be spending increasing time there. Also, the project went through hard times, with false starts and poor starts, but the Mexicans involved didn't give up, and finally succeeded, even if not everyone's cup of tea.


.....


Dawg reallly is fond of Santa Fe and its unique skyline - the suburb of Mexico City that developers transformed from an urban sewer/landfill into what I consider to be a fascinating urban development even if that development suffers from inadequate, even primitive urban expressways into the city. We used to drive from suburban Toluca through Santa Fe and the heart of Mexico City to get to Puebla City on our semi-annual drive from Lake Chapala to the Chiapas Highlands and return and I was always impressed by the innovative architecture of the Santa Fe área with what I considered to be some stunning architectural achievements but, once the Arco Norte Autopista bypass from Atlacomulco to Puebla was opened a few years ago, we no longer drove through Mexico City as that drive through the heart of the congested city (as opposed to the rural confines of the modern and well-designed Arco Norte) with the city´s notoriously corrupt cops and potential traffic tie-ups from Santa Fe through Ixtapaluca en route to Puebla City, no longer made any sense.

As to the efficacy of turning an ugly suburban landfill into a highrise development versus turning a waterfront, tourist oriented community such as the municipality of Chapala, there is no comparison and I write as one with experience in what uncontrolled and excessive highrise development can do to waterfront communities from some coast of Spain to the coast of my native Alabama/ Northwest Florida among other places with which I have personal experience. My experience along the Alabama/Florida Gulf Coast, parts of Spain and numerous other places tells me that sporadic development of highrise residential/commercial waterfront highrises in the beginning almost always overwhelms a small, seemingly inconsequential community such as Chapala. 

When Dawg was a kid in the 1940s and 1950s, the extraordinarily beautiful Gulf Coast in the región between the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay in Alabama and the área around Panama City Beach, Florida was noted for its pristine sugar-white sand beaches abutting the crystal-clear aquamarine waters of the gulf along about 200 miles of shoreline easily viewable from and to be enjoyed by motorists touring the área. The beaches there in those days were dotted with small, unobtrusive and relatively inexpensive charming beach cottages. Then, in came the developers supported by urban planners hungry for developer bucks and within the short span of some 30years, much of that 200 miles of beautiful beaches had been transformed into endless miles of ugly highrise condominiums as far as the eye could see and no access to beach and gulf vistas nor, in a practical sense, beach access by tourists passing through the area. 

More later but I have run out of time.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

they will go broke before they start or will build one tower and die so go at it...after estroying many Spanish villages and towns , le´s do it in Mexico since everything has died in Spain..what a shame if it acually happens but that is life, I still will have my nice house an garden so let it be..


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## joaquinx (Jul 3, 2010)

Two of the questions the crowd asked are very important. *Water* and *sewage*. If they can answer that question or fail it another way, everyone near the lake will suffer.


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## jlms (May 15, 2008)

Santa Fe. don't get me started about that.

In a city where most people rely on public transport that place is a real nightmare if you don't have a car, and I am sure that is in purpose.

It is a form of apartheid lite, many poorer Mexicans dislike the place with a vengeance.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


jlms said:



Santa Fe. don't get me started about that.

In a city where most people rely on public transport that place is a real nightmare if you don't have a car, and I am sure that is in purpose.

It is a form of apartheid lite, many poorer Mexicans dislike the place with a vengeance.

Click to expand...

_No, by all means, let´s get you started "...about that."

I have lived in a number of urban áreas in many parts of the world and poor people without cars and dependent upon frequently available public transportation and living marginally financially speaking, often hate places such as Santa Fe, Beverly Hills, Mountain Brook and Neully as well they should since those are the enclaves of the weathy with big-ole cars and access to myriad services unaffordable to the poor but that does not preclude the supposed improvement of a repulsive urban landfill with archetectuarally dramatic residential and business centers with an emphasis on highrises just because those unable to live or work there view these developments with envy.

Frankly, I don´t see why the developers or residents of Santa Fe should care what the poor an lower middle classes in adjacent áreas of the DF care about their immoderate and fanciful urban developmnt unless, of course, those who envy the place decide it is time for a "barn burning". This happens periodically in human history and if it become apparent that social unrest may bring anarchy to Santa Fe, it´s back to Mobile for the Dawg.

Of course, , I only pass through there on my way from Lake Chapala to Chiapas. They can have it - I just admire the place on my way through there.


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

jlms said:


> It is a form of apartheid lite, many poorer Mexicans dislike the place with a vengeance.


I'd describe your characterization as an exaggeration. :eyebrows:


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


Longford said:



I'd describe your characterization as an exaggeration. :eyebrows:

Click to expand...

_As would I and I must suggest that "apartheid" is a poorly understood concept delineated by the former white racist regime of South Africa before its fall. "Apartheid" was a coded, legal concept having to do with separation of the races in that nation as it existed in the years preceding the inclusión of various races in the governmental process and was historically meant to separate African "*******" from African "mixed race ********" from African "Whites" and there was also a large East Indian populaton scattered about the country which barely met any of those theee categories. 

The important thing to understand is that "apartheid" was a legal concept grounded in human corruption and that the notion of the rich and poor living among their brethren in disparate communities is simply a result of human interraction - not governmental decree.

If you do not comprehend the serious differences between "apartheid" and natural social inconguities common to all socieeties. I suggest you let the subject lie unresolved and not bring it up.


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

Hound Dog said:


> If you do not comprehend the serious differences between "apartheid" and natural social inconguities common to all socieeties. I suggest you let the subject lie unresolved and not bring it up.


If you don't understand the discussion and comments of others, just ask a question.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

[_QUOTE=Longford;7001570]If you don't understand the discussion and comments of others, just ask a question.[/QUOTE]_

Agreed. But presupposion of any response based on prior and clearly stated prejudices serves no one so, possibly, questions become points of order and not invitations to further discourse.


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## mes1952 (Dec 11, 2012)

We'll see if this is one of those projects implemented by the Mexican government and/or American real estate investors that suffers the same consequences as all those empty ghost towers dotting the Baja coast from Tijuana to Ensenada. The Mexican government has proposed several of these type of projecgts and yet they never make it past the drawing board due to government cutbacks.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

This is not the Mexican government but a private developper. Hopefully he will have cubacks too...


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

The concept of hordes of the baby boom generation descending upon Mexico has been cussed and discussed on several other boards, some of it intelligently breaking down the proportion of "haves" who can move anywhere in the world and the "have nots" who don't even have enough to qualify for permanent residence in Mexico (and who knows how they can survive in retirement anywhere at all, but that's another matter). The question is: How many of those who can afford to live anywhere, including where they are right now would *choose *to move to Mexico, and particularly to a somewhat expensive high rise development which is anything but what Mexico represents to most people in the world: beautiful beaches, "quaint" villages, etc., etc.? 

If any of the boomers show up here, it will be nice to have some new, younger folks around.

If the developers are dreaming of a "flood" of prosperous folks coming, they need to drop the drugs and sober up, IMO.


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