WILD GEESE: John Reynolds, Property developer in Peru

FOR A builder with plans ready to leap off his architect’s drawing board the last call you probably want is from someone telling you there has been an important historical find on your site.

But in 2006 that was exactly the news John Reynolds received from a Peruvian archaeologist digging on land he was poised to turn into residential and holiday properties along the upmarket Pacific coastal region known as Asia, an hour’s drive south of the capital Lima.

For the native of Cloonacool in Co Sligo, the call was the start of months of delays and cost overruns. But it was also the moment when he announced his arrival as a serious player in Peru’s property market.

Reynolds had hired the archaeologist to certify that the site of his first development in the South American country was free of anything of historical interest, as required by Peruvian law.

“Everyone told me it would just be a formality. The area used to be cotton fields so I was confident there was going to be nothing there,” he says. “But then they dug these pits and started finding bodies. The archaeologists call to congratulate you but for us it was like . . . panic!”

Even the archaeologist leading the dig was surprised at what was turning up. “I feel guilty because I told John it was unlikely there was anything on his property,” says Luis Felipe Villacorta. “The problem is Peru is like Italy or Israel or Turkey – once you start digging there is a great possibility you will find archaeological ruins.”

As the size and importance of the find became clear Reynolds faced a choice: “By law the developer has to fund the excavation work so as well as the delay to starting the project you are then faced with the cost of Luis Felipe’s team. When we talked to other local developers their attitude was forget it, nobody does it, keep ploughing, dig the holes and pour the concrete. Keep building. No-one will say anything.”

It would have been the local way of doing things. “Peruvians are not used to follow the rules,” notes Villacorta wryly. “Of the 20 or so developments in Asia, only one other has undertaken a project to identify the archaeological remains.”

But Reynolds decided to bankroll the excavations. In the process he formed a firm friendship with Villacorta whose team surveyed and recovered over 20 graves and other artefacts belonging to two ancient fishing communities – dating back to 1,500BC – who seemingly worshipped the small offshore island after which the Asia region is named. “What was great was to see John’s enthusiasm grow,” says Villacorta.

“At first he did not understand what these bones and shells and things meant. But he became very involved and would even bring some of his investors out to the dig for a talk and then we’d all have a barbecue.”

“You end up falling in love with it,” admits Reynolds, whose $65 million project was held up for a year by the excavations. “You become more interested than you ever were before in archaeology. It took a lot of the financial pains away. You need an antidote. If you don’t get into it you are just going to sit there moaning and groaning. My competitors were calling me the stupid gringo. And at times, if you are sitting listening to them for too long, you feel like the stupid gringo!”

But during the delay Reynolds was also earning a name for himself as a serious foreign investor in Peru for the long haul. “John realised that this difficulty was an opportunity to distinguish himself from other developers. He ‘used archaeology’ to demonstrate that he is different as an investor. It made me a little bit ashamed for the attitude of some of my fellow Peruvian citizens,” says Villacorta.

For Reynolds it was a way to prove his long-term commitment to Peru. “We reckon Asia is going to be a city and that is not going to happen in less than 10 years. We might be here in 20 years.

“Doing things by the book is not just to get by the law, it is also your conscience. This is a wonderful country with fantastic history and we have to respect that. If we don’t have the respect for that then we are just someone else trying to make a quick buck. And that is not what we are about.”

Based in the US since leaving Ireland in 1981, Reynolds (50) first visited Peru in 2005 after he had been hired to turn around a British gaming company with interests in local casinos.

“I was pretty much as ignorant as most people then were in North America and Ireland about Peru, just knowing about Machu Picchu and Cusco,” he says in his soft Irish accent that has picked up a Southern American drawl, making him sound like possibly the most laid back executive in Lima.

He arrived just as Peru’s economy was taking off. The civil war that wrecked the country in the 1990s was over and Chinese demand for Peru’s metals was helping turbo-charge growth that shows no sign of slowing down.

During the visit a local developer took him to the Asia resort, where Lima’s elite have their holiday homes. He was so impressed he extended his stay. A new highway means that the area is increasingly becoming a distant, upmarket suburb of congested Lima which is hemmed in by the ocean and mountains.

Reynolds saw Asia as the future Hamptons of Lima and knew he had found his next project.

Now his Revolutions development group is one of the largest landowners in Asia with a land bank of nearly two million square metres in the area: “We purchased the first properties at $10-$12 a square metre and now they are appraised at $80-$90 a square metre and we expect it to continue. And that is a reasonable price when you consider the price of land in Lima. So it is still under the market price.”

Perhaps not surprisingly for a country which grew at almost 9 per cent last year, demand among Lima’s wealthy for an apartment or villa in Asia is booming. “In 2004 there were 32 commercial locations. Today there are 282. That tells you growth is happening. There were around 2,600 homes, now there are over 5,000.”

With the excavations over and remains catalogued Reynolds is powering ahead with his developments in Asia. As well as houses, hotels and apartments he is branching out into warehouses and low-cost housing. He is also building a museum to display the remains recovered by Villacorta and will sponsor the publication of a book about the dig next year. Reynolds now spends most of his time in Lima and helped set up the Irish Chamber of Commerce in Peru of which he is chairman.

The developer and archaeologist remain friends and are even planning a future dig together. Villacorta hopes to excavate a huge Incan mound about 30km inland and Reynolds has signed Revolutions up as one of the backers, despite the site not being on his property. “It is,” says Villacorta, “a story of serious science and friendship.”