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Forbes Life - Roughing It Out
Never taken anyone to this reef before,” says my fishing guide, Byron Sewell, throttling down next to a shadowy mass of coral. I plunge into the teal sea off the Amber Cat, a 33-foot sportfishing boat, and swim into a rush hour of iridescent angelfish, yellowtail snapper and fat, mottled grouper. The fish and I exchange mutually curious stares. Tourists may be commonplace off the beaches of Providenciales, the most resort-packed island in the Turks and Caicos, but here, 40 miles southeast across the Caicos Banks, just offshore from an 1,100-acre private island called Ambergris Cay, a snorkler is something of a pioneer (or “guinea pig,” says Byron from the boat, his eye trained for sharks).
Other pioneering pastimes on or around Ambergris Cay: hand-harvesting sea salt from tiny, deserted Fish Cay, slaloming your golf cart around intrepid iguanas on the island’s rudimentary roads and casting at a five-foot barracuda off Little Ambergris Cay. Purchased by Bluffton, South Carolina–based developer DPS, Ambergris Cay has just begun its transformation into the Turks & Caicos Sporting Club, a member-equity residential community modeled on other DPS properties like The Ford Plantation in Savannah, Georgia, and the Greenbrier Sporting Club in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. There’ll be no hotels or condos here—just 450 individually owned properties (no fractional buy-ins offered), a member’s lodge, beach club, marina, fitness center, equestrian center and spa.
All of which takes some imagination to envision at the moment. The office and employee dorm are the only completed buildings on Ambergris, and the island has been visited by just a few dozen buyers and their guests, flown over from Providenciales on DPS’s single-prop Cessna Caravan. The island’s “safari camp” provides accommodation, a cluster of five canvas tents set on wooden platforms over a raw terrain of volcanic rock and Turk’s head cacti along the island’s west-facing coastline. This is camping in only the loosest sense: The tents have electricity and running water, handsome rattan and mahogany furnishings, Frette bedding and Molton Brown bath products. Meals in the dining tent, produced by chef Bernie McDonough, a transplant from The Ford Plantation (and along with Byron, the fishing guide, part of a small staff catering to guests), are multicourse and delicious. And yet, a stay at the safari camp still feels appealingly sporty—try, for instance, navigating the footpaths in the pitch black after a few rounds of Bernie’s signature rum punch.
“Why not let owners experience the island in the raw?” says DPS managing director Peter Pollak of the idea to ship safari tents from Africa to Ambergris. Since the tents were set up late last year, stays have become popular for those who have bought property and prompted sales among their friends (by press time 120 homesites, worth $100 million, had sold). Of the two new owners I met on my recent visit, both decided to buy in after a night in the tents. “There we were in the evening with the lights off, looking at the stars,” recalls Connie Lomax of Tryon, North Carolina, of her first stay on the island in January. “We thought that was pretty spectacular.” Given golf-cart run of the island the next day (unaccompanied by a pushy sales agent), she and her husband, Lee, made an offer and closed on a site on the island’s white-sand Columbus Beach.
One factor in the Lomaxes’ decision was their understanding that DPS would protect the island’s natural landscape, preserving, in part, the rugged charm of the safari camp experience. “We’re really respecting the environmental integrity of the island,” says Pollak, maintaining that with a maximum of 450 oneor two-story homes set along eight miles of waterfront, each of which must be approved by an architectural board, Ambergris won’t be garish or overbuilt. No cars will be allowed on the island, and approximately 30 percent of the land, including the archeological ruins of 18-century British loyalist homesteads, will remain a nature preserve. And given members-only access (rental of homes can only be arranged between property owners), the residents on the island will all be, as Pollak puts it, “stewards of the land.”
When I met the Lomaxes, they were on their first postpurchase visit to Ambergris, and while I spent the afternoon guinea-pig snorkeling with Byron, they opted to sit in beach chairs on their empty homesite, celebrating their future with Coronas. “We’re thinking of this as a legacy place,” Connie told me later. “A place our kids can go and their kids can go. A pristine, preserved little spot.” l
One-half to eight-acre homesites at the Turks & Caicos Sporting Club available for $525,000 to $6 million (for land only). Sites with predesigned cottages also available. Membership in the Sporting Club (required of landowners) entails a $75,000 one-time fee plus $7,500 in annual dues. (877) 815-1300, www.tc-sportingclub.com.
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