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Everywhere you look is water - everywhere, Pollack says. Turquoise on one side, sapphire on the other.

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Getaway
CFO
Retreat
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Article
Retreats : Paradise Found

An unspoiled island teeming with an unlimited array of diversions, the new Turks & Caicos Sporting Club offers the respite for the restless

By: Hilary Lewis
Premiere Issue , Page 130

In the early 1990s, Canadian developer Henry Mensen stumbled upon the uninhabited paradise of Ambergris Cay while passing through the Turks & Caicos Islands. He didn’t need a pitchbook to tell him he was looking at one very hot issue. By 1995, he had purchased the entire island.

Three years later, Mensen approached Peter Pollak and Steve Schram of DPS Development Company, who were looking to expand a collection of residence-club projects that included the Greenbrier Sporting Club in West Virginia and Ford Plantation in Savannah, Georgia.

Mensen flew the two to Ambergris Cay to bask in the island’s spectacular setting; it was all the due diligence they needed. “Everywhere you look is water — everywhere,” Pollak says. “Turquoise on one side, sapphire on the other. Dramatic sunrises. Beautiful beaches. Unspoiled, untouched.” Done deal.

Today, the joint venture the three men formed has begat the new Turks & Caicos Sporting Club, an exclusive 1,100-acre residence club that offers a sublime retreat for the restless man who doesn’t like to spend his downtime lounging idly on his assets. Purchase a home site here — at a cost of $525,000 to $6 million, with an initial membership fee of $75,000 — and year-round activities await: bonefishing on shallow Little Ambergis Cay (the turquoise side), sportfishing a mile offshore; snorkeling through one of the world’s largest reefs or scuba diving along an underwater 7,000-foot wall (the sapphire side).

Air taxis can whisk golfers to such legendary Caribbean courses as Barbados’s Green Monkey and the Dominican Republic’s Teeth of the Dog, both within a two-and-a-half-hour flight radius. Not to mention horseback riding, hiking, biking, boating, beaches, sailing, sea kayaking, windsurfing, squash and tennis courts, an exercise room with climbing wall, aerobics, Pilates, a swimming pool, holistic spa, billiards and card rooms, bars, restaurants, movie theater and, of course, a bowling alley.

Pollak’s company is building for the long haul: specifically, a 5,700-foot runway and a deep-water marina capable of handling 200-foot-plus yachts; since there will be a customs officer on the island, getting here, for those flying or boating privately, is basically no longer or more complicated than visiting Miami. And very often, the trip comes with a visual treat: Ambergris lies directly off the equator-to-Arctic migratory route of sperm whales, which can often be seen from sea or air.

Some investment aspects prove equally breathtaking. Turks & Caicos law requires no annual property taxes, no tax on revenue generated, no time frame for building your home. And the absolute freehold title ensures residents can pass their homes on to their heirs (they’ll actually be grateful for this one). Members can either design those homes or choose from predesigned cottages, and each of the 307 home sites on the island will afford water views, thanks to a series of bluffs that rise as much as 100 feet above sea level.

It all combines to create a private community that cannot easily be replicated by simply purchasing a private island. “They could do that,” Pollak notes dryly. “But they’d be out there by themselves. Where are they going to get their own clubhouse, their own 5,700-foot runway . . . their own private bonefishing guide . . . their own private chef . . . their own private marina . . . ?”

877-815-1300; tc-sportingclub.com