Is that the tide or a country club?

By Chris Baldwin

West Coast Bureau Chief, Golf Publisher Syndications

updated 6:34 p.m. ET June 15, 2006

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico - It's a beautiful early-summer Friday in Cabo, and Federico Vaughan is in a rush. His Blackberry is jingling every few minutes; the knocks at his office door are as steady as an ocean wave. He has a flight to Las Vegas to catch; a room in the Bellagio and a weekend of fun await.

Vaughan works as "director division golf" (translation: a top honcho) for Grupo Questro, a prominent family-run real-estate/golf firm that's transforming both golf and commercial property in this Mexican resort peninsula. Grupo Questro is set to open three new golf courses in Cabo in the next year, boosting the area's total from seven to 10 in one building binge.

That the director division golf has a high-rolling weekend in Sin City on tap reflects the moving and shaking that is remaking an area that only a dozen years ago was miles and miles of undeveloped coastline.

"You could buy a one-acre lot of land down by the new marina for $10,000 four years ago," said local businessman Diego Vidal of Baja Wild, an adventure-tour company. "For almost nothing, right? Now that same acre will cost you $100,000.

"In only four years."

Golf has been no small factor in the swing. Grupo Questro is building a sprawling complex called Puerto Los Cabos in San Jose del Cabo that includes its own marina, luxury homes, high-end shopping and two 18-hole courses - a Jack Nicklaus Signature design and a Greg Norman Signature. The marina in the still largely quaint, real Mexican town of San Jose will somewhat resemble the commercialized, almost American shopping-center copy in party town Cabo San Lucas.

It's part of progress, as inevitable, apparently, as the tides.

Not that that's all bad. Hundreds of jobs will be created along with the latest high-end golf courses and sparkling modern condos (of the type you could find in Vegas).

"As you can see, almost everyone in Cabo is able to afford a car," Vidal said, looking around the sand-and-rock parking lot of a beach popular with locals. "It may be an old car, but it's transport for a family."

Grupo Questro's vision includes housing for much better-off families - the U.S. kind that can afford a second or third home and don't want to be left out of Cabo now that it's as trendy as a Manolo Blahnik heel in certain tax brackets.

A nice three- or four-bedroom home in Cabo runs $800,000 to $900,000 U.S., easy. Anything close to oceanfront climbs to at least $2 million.

"You have all these beautiful homes," said Martina Fahrmann, an Argentine transplant who's sales coordinator at Sheraton Hacienda del Mar Resort & Spa. "And they're only being used two, three weeks a year."

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