Pennsylvania Native Creates New Urbanism in Nicaragua

Mike Cobb is a self-described outside-the-box kind of thinker.

In 1998, he was working in computer sales for a personal computer manufacturer in Washington, D.C. In 2000, the 43-year-old Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania native purchased 2,500 acres of property in Nicaragua, thereby substantially expanding the land holdings he and his partners had accumulated in Central America. And in 2002, with his wife, Carol, and their daughters, Amanda, now seven, and Emily, now three, Mike moved to Nicaragua.

“It wasn’t the lifestyle that brought me here,” Mike explains of living in Nicaragua. “But the lifestyle here is why we’re staying.”

Mike Cobb and his partner, attorney Joel Nagel, are co-founders of Gran Pacific Resort, located an hour from Managua, Nicaragua’s capital, on the Pacific coast. This is their most mature project in Central America, with the initial infrastructure complete and more than two dozen homes in various stages of development. The Las Perlas condominiums are completed and being rented. The property consists of some three-and-a-half miles of oceanfront and is touted on their web site as “Central America’s first New Urbanism, master-planned project”. Planned for Gran Pacifica are oceanfront condos and homes, a golf course, golf-front villas and lots, the casita village, and rental and property management services. The golf course development and three current condominium projects (Las Perlas Condo-Hotel & Villas, Milagro del Mar Condos & Villas, and El Coral I Town Center Condos) at the site are joint ventures, aimed at “leveraging the talents and efforts of our joint venture partners to provide a superior consumer product and a fair return to our shareholders”. In essence, Mike says, the goal is to build a “Granada next to the ocean”, referring to Nicaragua’s colonial town located southeast of Gran Pacifica, abounding with residences, hotels, restaurants, and shops.

It’s hard to believe that when Mike purchased a resort that had foreclosed in Belize in 1998 and moved there with Carol for seven months, the sum total of his knowledge about owning and operating resorts was that he had stayed in resorts in the past.

“I’m not an architect or an engineer,” he says, adding that he relies on professionals, whether they are Gran Pacifica team members, joint venture partners or contracted help, to do what he doesn’t know how to do. Newly-hired Martin G. Roberts serves as president and chief operating officer, overseeing the technical and managerial aspects of the project. Martin has built more than 30,000 homes in his 35-year career.

“I weigh options and I’m not afraid to make decisions,” Mike says introspectively of his role. “The learning curve was straight uphill. I have made some wrong decisions that have cost us money. I call that paying my tuition.”

In 1999, he and others purchased 100 acres of pastureland in Panama and reforested it with teak. Many people have asked him the wisdom of this, since it will likely take 25 years to realize a profit from the trees.

“I tell them I will either need the money in 25 years and will be really glad I did this or I won’t need the money and I’ll be really glad I did it,” he says with a smile.

Mike and his partners also have property on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. This project is in the master plan stage.

“Our business model is to provide high-end infrastructure and amenities that people really want to have,” Mike says of their Central American suite of offerings.

“I don’t want to be in the business of selling anything. We are client-centric. In Central America, we have and will have quality product offerings for which we are known. People only need to decide where in Central America they want to live.”
It is this visionary gift, his love of “wrestling things to the ground and putting my arms around them”, and his penchant for taming chaos that make Mike the communicator of Gran Pacifica’s vision. He shares his often-hard-earned wisdom and experience, too. He has spoken at over 100 international conferences about real estate financing and development. He has also acted as a consultant to the Oxford Club, a private network of investors and entrepreneurs, and gives counsel to various real estate projects throughout Central America.

Gran Pacific also has a social conscience. Its model ensures long-term, responsible development that contributes to employment in the area. It is estimated that the project build-out will take 20 to 25 years. In addition, in 2005 Gran Pacific partnered with USAID and the Pittsburgh Rotary Club to build a $300,000 primary health and education program in the nearby neighborhood of Villa el Carmen. The project is called Children, Health, Education and Supporting Services, or CHESS, and is aimed at improving the quality of life in Nicaragua.

Expectations of the Lifestyle in Nicaragua: The Shoe Never Dropped

Mike’s wife, Carol, gave up her career in retail management in the late 1990s, when the pair married, and helped with promoting and marketing some of the Central American projects in which Mike was involved. She had only visited Nicaragua for a week before the couple came for a three-day visit to rent their house in 2002. What were they thinking before they moved here? What were their expectations?

“I don’t want to say we intellectualized the process [of moving here] exactly, but we read the books and we talked to people who lived here,” Mike recalls. “And we said, ‘Here’s what we should expect: We’ll have a short honeymoon period and then reality will hit’.”

“We came here and we tried not to have expectations. We came here and we liked it…and then we liked it more…and we liked it more. And we waited to see when the other shoe would drop. It never did.”

Mike explains that he and Carol and their daughters have many friends, both Nicaraguan and those like themselves who have decided to move here. The Gran Pacifica staff and people he works with professionally are all top-notch and friendly. The restaurants here are phenomenal, he says, and there are many places to go for family outings. All of this translates to an overall great feeling about being here, he says.

And Mike and Carol are thrilled with the education Amanda and Emily are receiving at the German School in Managua. The curriculum is taught in Spanish with daily German classes. As their primary school education progresses, math and science will be taught in German, and eventually all classes will be taught in German. In the end, the girls will speak three languages before they finish junior high school.

Mike says he and Carol are fortunate enough to have hired domestic help. As a result, when he’s not at work, where he can be found 10 to 12 hours a day, or traveling, which he does 10 to 15 days a month, they have no household chores standing in the way of fun.

“This means that every evening the girls decide what we’re going to do, whether it’s putting puzzles together or playing games or dancing,” he says. On the weekends, they do fun things like see a movie for two or three dollars, have a great, inexpensive meal, visit many of the tourist sites or go to the beaches. And the prices for all these outings are very reasonable, particularly when compared to the fifty dollars Mike recently spent for a business breakfast in a hotel in Monaco.

Mike says it’s the ‘rawness’ of Nicaragua that he finds so appealing. As a country, she’s unabashedly without makeup or fancy clothes and hip accessories. She is what she is and makes no excuses for it. And that’s a good thing. He once compared Nicaragua to New York City and its own brand of rawness in one of the regular newsletters he sends out to about 15,000 people who have expressed interest in Nicaragua over the years. “I had a lot of explaining to do,” he recalls.

“The quality of life we enjoy is why we’re staying,” Mike says. “We love it here.”
For more information about Gran Pacifica please visit their web site at www.granpacifica.com

For more information about CHESS please visit www.chessnicaragua.com