Buying in CapeVerdeIt's cool, but complicated: Frances O'Rourkehears about a launch of luxury homes in Africa at the Cannes Film Festival
Scene one: an airport. "Cape Verde? Is it a country? I thought it was a company," says one of our party of five at the start of a long day's journey of discovery to the Cannes Film Festival.
A group of journalists are heading there to find out how a group of enterprising Corkmen, chilled out Americans and the government of Cape Verde are planning to turn an archipelago of 10 Atlantic islands 500kms off the coast of Senegal into the European Caribbean. Okay, the plot is complicated, the cast large.
Scene two: a hotel in Nice. The cast is now assembled on stage: it includes one Corkman, two Cape Verdean ministers and a couple of cool Americans intent on explaining how they plan to build apartments, villas, five-star hotels and resorts, and of course, golf courses, on Cape Verde.
Scene three: a club/restaurant on the beach at Cannes, across the road from the Carlton Hotel. Not just any club, but a Nikki Beach club, which the cool among you may know from Miami or Marbella or St Tropez.
The cool Americans own Nikki Beach, a company which runs clubs and resorts and which has committed €100 million to joint ventures with Irish company Cape Verde Development.
Nikki Beach attracts celebrities, we're told, so we're keeping a sharp eye out for them. Tonight's the night of the Ocean's 13 party - might George or Matt or Brad be lurking about?
Er, no - just some of the stars of a Living TV show called Entourage which only the lads have heard of. No matter. The night gets more and more riotous and ends with a loud and colourful mini-carnival, as a troupe of Cape Verdean entertainers stage a show on the beach. It's Afro-Brazilian and makes everyone think that Cape Verde must be a pretty fun place to go.
The end. (We'll draw a veil over the post-party trip to a loud and crowded nightclub where cool bouncers in tight white T-shirts keep the crowd away from celebrity seating areas . . . although the only celeb anyone spotted being ushered behind the velvet ropes was Dolph Lundgren. Oh, Google him.)
Alright, it won't win the Palme D'Or, but the jaunt to Cannes was a novel if complicated way to tell us about the ambitious plans by Cape Verde Development and Nikki Beach to build on these Atlantic islands in the sun.
It's not a new story in Ireland of course: over 500 Irish investors have already bought properties on Sal, the first Cape Verde island to get an international airport. (There's another in the islands, and two more to open by the end of the year). What's new is the launch of a five-star resort in Mindelo, the capital of Sao Vicente - the second most populated island in Cape Verde - and of plans for another five-star resort on the Baia das Gatas on the same island, to include an Ernie Els-designed golf course. Fortim Mindelo is being built on the site of an old fort in the centre of the colourful capital, with sweeping views of the sea and on offer are 60 two-bedroom apartments costing from €335,000 and 14 villas from €995,000.
Nikki Beach will provide the leisure facilities which include restaurants, a nightclub, entertainment centre, casino, "cool pools" and bafflingly, what it calls "signature Nikki opium beds" i.e. luxury poolside loungers. It will also run a five-star hotel and beach club in the four-star Paradise Beach development on Sal, where properties cost from €120,000 to €170,000. Altogether, Cape Verde Development has eight developments either being built or in planning stages, with one, on Sal, actually built. Prices in the various developments range from €69,000 to close to €1 million.
Tom Sheehy, the quiet Corkman whose overseas adventures began when his Clonakilty furniture firm worked on apartment fit-outs abroad, says the company he started in 2004 is now the biggest developer in Cape Verde. He and Nikki Beach are confident that it will become the European Caribbean. The Cape Verde government is working hard to make it happen, developing infrastructure like airports, a modern port in Sal and more desalinisation plants (the source of water is the sea).
Will the story of the country's and the company's growth have a happy ending? Will investors be glad they bought here now? Watch this space.
www.capeverdedevelopment.com
