real estate

Lucrative leases granted for pennies

David Mesa/LA PRENSA

easy money: Critics say millions have been lost on concessions.1034010

It might cost $4,000 a month to dock a yacht in a marina on the Amador Causeway, or $400 a night to sleep at the Miramar Intercontinental Hotel on Avenida Balboa, but the government apparently thinks the property in these areas isn't worth very much.

An investigation by La Prensa uncovered government concessions on land in those areas, as well as Punta Paitilla, in which the leases have been granted for as little as a few cents per square meter, far under the land's market value.

The government has granted leases for about 600,000 square meters of property in areas where the value of property can be as much as $5,000 a square meter.

Numerous projects have been built on these concessions, netting the developers millions in profits. Yet the government has received almost nothing from these valuable properties.

Architect Brooke Alfaro said that the fees being paid are “ridiculous.”

“It would have been better not to charge anything for the concessions,” Alfaro said. “This is a gift that the Partido Revolucionario Democrático made to the people who are in power.”

Fellow architect Rodrigo Mejía Andrión said that the government has basically thrown away money that could be used to address the country's infrastructural needs.

“People are making a lot of money off these properties,” Andrión said.

In the Amador Causeway, the government receives just over $100,000 a month for its concessions, which total 525,000 square meters, most of which are seabed leases for marinas.

These leases have been awarded to five companies, Grupo F., Las Brisas de Amador, Fuerte Amador Resort & Marina (FARM), Agro-Ganadera Santa Fe (La Playita) and Marina Montemar.

The government is involved in litigation involving the scope of Grupo F's project on the causeway, and is in the midst of trying to resolve the lucrative concession granted to the Club de Yates y Pesca on Avenida Balboa that is now being altered due to the Coastal Belt project.

But many questions remain unanswered, such as the lucrative concession granted in 1994 on Punta Paitilla to 19 politically-connected families. The government's deal with the Miramar Intercontinental Hotel on Avenida Balboa has also come under scrutiny.

Whether the government can recoup any of the money it has signed away, though, remains to be seen.