Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Developing, operating, and owning lagoons

Here is a company that I just discovered called, The Lagoon Development Company. What they do is develop, operate, and own large-scale lagoons for both swimming and water sports.

From what I can glean from their website, they make money by selling access tickets to these lagoons and/or by partnering with other developers on master-planned communities.

In this latter scenario, I would imagine this means fee revenue upfront, with the ongoing operations then getting funded, at least partially, by the communities where they are housed.

From the videos they have online, these lagoons look very impressive. I think they’re some of the largest ever developed. But at the end of the day, these are artificial lagoons, and so I’m expecting there to be mixed opinions.

Would you want to see something like this developed in your city? And if it did exist, would you pay to go? I would.

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4 responses to “Developing, operating, and owning lagoons”

  1. Kiel Avatar
    Kiel

    Hey Brandon – check out Crystal Lagoons (https://www.crystal-lagoons.com/); they’ve been around for a while and have projects all around the world. I’ve looked at a few master planned community projects (in Florida and Texas) that either considered installing these (or ultimately did). We couldn’t get the math to work (I.e., projected home price premiums for having a Crystal Lagoon in the community) and there were concerns with the longer term maintenance being assumed by the HOAs. That being said, some of those projects moved ahead (without me) and look great – not sure about the numbers or the longer term burden, but they’re awesome to check out if you’re ever in those areas.

    Reply
    1. Brandon Graham Donnelly Avatar
      Brandon Graham Donnelly

      Hey Kiel, thanks for sharing. This is exactly what I was wondering. When you looked at this, were the lagoons going to be both public (ticketed access) and private (HOA), with some sort of reciprocal operating agreement?

      Reply
      1. Kiel Avatar
        Kiel

        For the deals we looked at, the lagoons were going to be private to the residents (and the HOA would have to budget for maintenance and reserves). However, I know at least one of those deals moved forward with ticketed access (i.e., residents could use the facilities for free but it was also open to the public on a pay-per-use basis). My guess is that was the optimal way to get the math to work. I’m assuming the tradeoff was achieving lower home price premiums but potentially covering operating, maintenance and reserve costs with ticket (and possibly concessions) revenue.

        Reply
  2. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    Few years ago, we visited this camping resort in Italy with our young kids. (https://www.canvasholidays.ie/italy/tuscany/campsite-village-park-albatros.php) They loved swimming in the multiple lagoons. Although there was an ocean beach nearby, no one went because the scene at the lagoons was festive and easy. Perhaps this summer vacation model would work somewhere outside of Toronto.

    Reply

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