Staff Reporter 01.NOV.08
A €300million golf resort project in the Larnaca area is expected to go ahead, Overseas Property Professional has revealed. The Med Golf Group – a Cypriot consortium – have already carried out over 18 months of environmental studies, and are expecting to receive the green light in the next few months. “The golf course is on its way, it’s approved and we are moving on,” Litsa Louca at Hassapis Land Developers told the Larnaca News. Cyprus currently has three golf courses but only one golf resort at Aphrodite Hills in Paphos. The proposed Larnaca Golf and Country Club, at Tersefanou, will include an 18-hole golf course, clubhouse, village square, purpose built function rooms, spa facilities and more than 500 private properties. Health treatment will also be available on site with minor cosmetic surgery being performed in the resort’s medical centre. The Med Golf Group has signed an exclusive contract with the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) which will manage the golfing facilities and develop an on-site PGA academy. The agreement with the PGA is exclusive and is the only one allowed on Cyprus. By signing the agreement, the golf course will be able to host Ryder Cup games in the future and this is expected to be a major selling point for the resort. The group has also employed the services of Morpheus Investments as the principal sales agent for the project. The firm’s director, Derek Hatton, said his company is looking to internationalise its sales process and will work with a limited number of “quality sub-agent partners” for the project in Europe, Dubai and South Africa. ECO ISSUES Environmental studies carried out on the project would help it stand out from others in Cyprus and Europe, CEO of Hassapis Land Developers and major shareholder of Med Golf Group, George Hassapis said, and he revealed: “Water is a massive concern for us here in Cyprus so we took proactive steps to make sure that the entire resort would fit in with the area and be sustainable, before being asked to do this by the Environmental Agency (EA). “The construction of a desalination plant was part of the requirement to build the resort and we will also have the capacity to sell water to the government to supply the local community should it be needed. We also had to tell the EA what we would do with the excess salt from the project and spent a lot of money to make sure that the water pipeline didn’t affect the local wildlife. This is very important for our sales partners as environmental concerns in Cyprus and around the world are growing. By spending so much time and money on this, we believe it will aid the sales process. Now we have EA approval, we are waiting on the government to decide the appropriate level of taxes to be levied on the project, so we can proceed.” The project plans include 285 two, three and four-bedroom villas; 211 one, two and three-bedroom apartments; and 40 ‘hotel-style’ rooms within the complex. According to Cypriot law, completion on the project must happen within 24 months of receiving building permission.
