Builder hopes lagoon makes big splash
The developer who helped make splash pads a standard feature of local master-planned communities plans to add a Caribbean touch to his next project, a suburban subdivision with an artificial lagoon that covers 1½ acres and includes a sandy beach.
Al Brende, owner of Houstonbased Land Tejas, is betting the private lagoon will entice people to buy houses in the forthcoming Balmoral community in northeast Harris County. A company spokesman said Brende has a history of offering cutting-edge amenities, including the kid-friendly splash pads he started adding in 2004.
“He was one of the first in Houston to build splash pads,” said Tim Johnson, Land Tejas’ director of community sales and marketing. “Now, any master-planned community has a splash pad.”
The Balmoral lagoon, plus a similar one near Dallas, will be the first two to open in Texas. They represent the latest in developers’ quest for superior amenities — from hike-and-bike trails and recreation centers to elaborate playgrounds with educational elements — that can distinguish a suburban community, attract residents and boost home prices.
“It’s so unique, it just blows me away,” said David Jarvis, senior vice president at John Burns Real Estate Consulting, about the
planned lagoon. “Everybody in the industry will go to take a look.”
Other developers will be looking to see if the hefty pioneering investment pays off.
“That’s the pattern with master-planned communities: It’s so competitive that there are always new amenities being considered,” said Blake Coleman, principle at TBG Partners. “If there’s one that’s found successful, then it’s likely to be replicated.”
The technology for the lagoon at Balmoral, to be built near Atascocita, comes from Florida-based U.S. Crystal Lagoons Corp., the U.S. arm of the company that built the world’s largest swimming pool in Algarrobo, Chile, in 2006, then built a bigger one in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2015.
The company has 15 current U.S. projects, including one at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, Crystal Lagoons U.S. CEO Uri Man said.
“We believe Texas should be one of our biggest markets,” Man said.
He cited a sonic-waterfiltration system designed to keep the lagoon crystal clear while using 50 percent less water than a park of the same size. He said the lagoons use a fraction of the chemicals of a conventional swimming pool, and sport 400 sensors measuring water parameters in real time. The material lining the lagoon also is made of proprietary technology, he said.
“It’s a game changer for the Houston master planned community market,” Man said. “Instead of getting on a plane and flying to the Caribbean, you can get in your car and drive to Crystal Lagoon.”
Plans for Balmoral sprouted in fall 2015, at a meeting of the Urban Land Institute in Cabo, Mexico, where Man led developers, including Brende of Land Tejas, on a tour of a lagoon project there. Afterward, he said, Brende expressed interest in working with Crystal Lagoons and its 15 in-house architects.
That project will be dwarfed, however, by an 8-acre lagoon east of Dallas, scheduled to begin construction in March.
In Balmoral, lagoon construction is expected to begin by late summer or early fall, with a targeted summer 2018 opening, said Jeff Sheenan, director of community affairs and amenity development for Land Tejas.
Home construction will start in late April or early May of this year, and people are expected to start moving into finished houses in the third quarter. When the project is built out, within 10 to 12 years, it will have 1,700 home sites.
In January, Land Tejas also announced a second project in collaboration with Crystal Lagoons: an 8½-acre lagoon, more than 35 times the size of an Olympic swimming pool, slated to begin construction by year-end in an undisclosed location.