2,399
2,399

How Troia is Set to Double in Size

 

10 September 2017

The tourism development project for the Troia peninsula now has Sonae, the Pestana group and the heiress of the Zara empire among its principal players

  1. 1. SONAE CAPITAL

43 hectares

There are 946 beds being built in the heart of the Troia Resort, where the demolition of the famous towers of the old Torralta venture took place. Sonae Capital’s tourist project includes apartments near the beach and the apartment hotels, restaurants and shops that already exist in the marina, where passengers disembark from the catamaran coming from Setúbal. Sonae owns the 61 rooms and 144 residential suites of the five-star Troia Design Hotel, as well as the Troia casino, together with the fund management company Oxy Capital. The purchase of these assets from Amorim Turismo was news at the end of 2014.

  1. 2. SONAE CAPITAL

78 hectares

This beachfront area hosts the Troia Resort Village’s 90 homes and a set of 96 villa lots overlooking the beach, lake and golf course.

  1. 3. SONAE CAPITAL

101 hectares

Alongside Troia Golf, Sonae Capital’s tourism development project envisages the construction of a new five-star resort-hotel with up to 600 beds facing the beach.

  1. 4. SONAE CAPITAL

264 hectares

Next to the Roman ruins of Troia, Sonae Capital foresees the installation of a small boutique hotel having 60 beds. 125 new houses, with a total of 640 beds, will also be built in this area surrounding the Caldeira, the lagoon facing the river Sado.

  1. 5. PESTANA GROUP

104 hectares

Just in front of the ferry that transports cars from Setubal, the Pestana Troia Eco-Resort & Residences has already built about two-thirds of the maximum 955 beds foreseen. 5% of the land has been built upon, with a green area accounting for 45% and an ecological reserve for 50%.

  1. 6. SOLTROIA PROPERTY OWNERS

134 hectares

This development, which first began half a century ago, has views of the sea and the river. There are 1457 dwellings including apartments and second homes. There are still lots for sale in the project which encompasses 3,600 residential beds and is awaiting approval of the detail plan by the Municipality of Grândola.

7, 8 AND 9. ROSP GROUP

333 hectares

Sandra Ortega’s group Rosp finalised a purchase and sale contract with Sonae Capital at the end of 2016. In addition to the new golf course facing the Sado, another 3,300 new tourist beds facing the sea can be built on the land. But the Rosp group plans on less.

COMPORTA

Twenty kilometres ahead, there are new tourist developments already under construction in the village of Carvalhal. This is the case of La Réserve, owned by the French group Térresens, and the architect Miguel Câncio Martins’ Quinta da Comporta hotel. Ten kilometres later, the Vanguard Properties group, owned by the Frenchman Claude Berda, is about to start construction on the Muda Reserve.

Between hotels, apartment hotels, holiday villas, apartments and residential homes, the number of beds that can be found on the peninsula of Troia is doubling.  The is in part due to new investments by the Sonae group’s tourism development projects, the Pestana group and Rosp, the group owned by Sandra Ortega, the daughter of Zara’s founder, who is considered the richest woman in Spain.

Troia already had about 6,000 beds when precisely 12 years ago, on September 8, 2005, Belmiro de Azevedo joined the then Prime Minister Jose Socrates to trigger the famous detonator.  The resulting implosion brought down the two old Torralta buildings and marked the formal start of Sonae Group’s investment in the Troia Resort.

Since then, the number of tourist and residential beds has already surpassed the 9,00o mark. Considering the real estate projects that have already designed for this peninsula in the coming years, the number of beds promises to exceed 12,000 by far.

Expresso spoke with all the principal players to chart the main investment projects planned along the nine kilometres of this tourist destination’s roads, which are so close to Lisbon. In all, Troia’s development plans permit a total of 15,000 beds in the thousand hectares which are surrounded by beaches and green areas of the nature reserve. The plan was approved by the Municipality of Grândola in 2011 and divided the peninsula into nine planning and management operating units (UNOP).

The first four UNOPs are in the hands of Sonae Capital and its Troia Resort project, in an investment of €400 million, covering 486 hectares of land totalling more than 7,000 residential and tourist beds, including more than two thousand beds in hotels, six hundred apartments and three hundred villas.

Sales of real estate are growing. Last June, more than 400 units were sold, totalling more than €200 million, distributed among Portuguese and international clients. Currently on sale are tourist apartments for between €224,000 and €759,000, villas between €494,000 and €1.5 million and lots starting at €359,000.

The properties, which attract stars like José Mourinho, is a vacation option, but also an investment since Sonae Capital guarantees a return of 4% for three years. Anyone who buys a €600,000 property, for example, can earn €24,000 in income a year, enjoy a 20-week vacation in their home and then hand it over to the Troia Resort for the remaining 32 weeks of the year. The owner receives money and does not have to worry about anything since the property is furnished and equipped and the Troia Resort deals with rentals. The fact that the owner has the freedom to choose the periods in which they can use their property is another of the advantages highlighted by Sonae Capital.

On the hotel side of the equation, the hotels under management by Sonae Capital – Aqualuz and Troia Residence – saw a 10% increase in visitors up to August. The marina had its best summer ever, as did the Troia Design Hotel, whose majority shareholder is the venture capital fund management company Oxy Capital. The five-star hotel envisions an extremely positive year, double-digit growth thanks to an as yet to be announced year-end event.

The Troia Resort will complete ten years in 2018 and according to its development plan, can still build another 946 beds in apartments in the UNOP1, 600 beds in the new hotel in UNOP 3 and another 700 beds between the boutique hotel and the 125 houses foreseen for the UNOP4.

PESTANA SELLS ALL

The Pestana Troia Eco Resort has already built about two-thirds of the maximum of 955 beds provided for the UNOP 5, located just in front of the ferry that connects Troia to Setúbal. Employing a total investment of €80 million, it expects to generate an overall revenue of €150 million.

Designed to be developed in five phases over ten years, the project will be completed in just eight years, given current market conditions. This year is to be the best in terms of sales. The homes of the first four phases were 100% sold and the fifth and final phase now under construction sold 50% in just six months.

The sale price of the available houses starts at €475,000, or alternatively at €160,000 if the investor opts for the innovative fractionated system that allows the client, in co-ownership and through full deed, to buy 25% of the furnished property and to use the property for 15 days out of every two months. There are also five lots for exclusive villa construction near the beach.

LOTS IN SOLTROIA

Next to the new Pestana Troia Eco Resort is the set of 400 residential plots of the Soltroia development, designed by an Arab investor in the 1960’s. The remaining lots are on sale for €400,000 each, and the houses that were already built houses can exceed €2 million.

To underpin the interest in real estate and to avoid the massive construction of high-rise apartments in the last available lots of UNOP 6, the association of the approximately 1400 property owners of Soltroia (Aprosol) is now waiting for the municipality of Grândola to approve the detail plan and avoid the loss of character of the development that continually attracts well-known entrepreneurs, politicians, journalists, judges or generals, including the former President of the Republic Ramalho Eanes.

WAITING FOR ZARA

At the end of 2016, Sonae Capital negotiated a €50-million contract to sell Sandra Ortega, Zara’s heir and considered to be the richest woman in Spain, the UNOP areas 7, 8 and 9. Ortega’s Rosp group is not yet officially the owner of the land and is studying the project.

A new golf course is planned for the land facing the river, but for the land facing the sea still nothing has been decided regarding the new tourist complex, next to the Soltroia, that should start construction in 2018 and open doors in 2021. This will be the least densely developed project on the Troia peninsula, since the group anticipates occupying only a small fraction of the capacity of construction allowed by the detail plan that permits two hotels and 240 houses, for a total superior to three thousand new beds.

APRIL 25th SAVED TROIA

“What saved Troia was the 25th of April because it stopped the construction and concrete plans of the old Torralta and kept Troia hibernating for decades until Sonae started off with this more sustainable and nature-friendly project,” says Pedro Filiol de Raimon, manager of the real estate agency Casa Caso. In fact, the old Torralta’s initial project envisaged about 70,000 beds, five times more than the current project for the entire peninsula of Troia. Construction started in 1971, but the company ran into financial difficulties and the state had to intervene at the end of 1974. At the turn of the century, the Sonae group acquired Torralta and the construction on the new Troia Resort started in 2005, giving new life to the area. The national nature conservation association Quercus is concerned. “We are very concerned about the resumption of the tourist development project in Troia, namely the construction of thousands of new beds in the region. On several occasions, Quercus has been able to warn of the risks of excessive occupation of this very ecologically sensitive territory. Now, given the information that the project will be resumed with the construction of several developments, the situation will obviously tend to worsen,” the head of the group, Nuno Sequeira, stated. In a reaction against the model of intensive development defined in Troia’s development plan, approved in 2011, the association expects that “the municipality, tour operators and real estate owners, after six years, will realize that the road to a quality tourism is not this,” thereby reducing construction density. António Figueira Mendes, mayor of Grândola since 2013, says that “Troia will never be like the Algarve in terms of overbuilding.”

Original Story: Expresso – Joana Nunes Mateus

Photo: Troia Resort

Translation: Richard Turner