Top international polo club to get five-star complex, designer shops and an equestrian showground
Friday, March 20, 2015 @ 6:15 PM
ONE of the world's most prestigious polo clubs has been given the go-ahead to expand and build a luxury holiday and residential complex in its vicinity.
Santa María Polo Club in Sotogrande (Cádiz province) will get a select club house, villas, a sponsors' pavilion, specialist retail outlets, and the already-named Hotel del Polo Gran Lujo, a five-star establishment.
The Mora Figueroa family wants to invest just over €1 billion in the new facilities, and this week the company Glenton - which owns the land - got the green light from the regional government of Andalucía to go ahead.
Glenton has been facing a mountain of red tape, including trying to make the project fit with the general town layout plans of neighbouring municipalities.
Paradoxically, the regional government would not initially give planning permission unless the project included a certain number of low-cost State-subsidised homes for first-time buyers on a meagre income, known as Viviendas de Protección Oficial (Properties of Official Protection, or VPOs) - despite the polo club and its planned complex being aimed at the crème de la crème of the sport and ultra-high net worth visitors and homebuyers.
Months of negotiations ensued, and Glenton finally agreed with San Roque town council that the developer would hand over a given portion of land to the latter to exempt them from the requirement to build social housing.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com