 |
|
Forget the hut in the woods. The new breed of ecoresort has 300 rooms, air
conditioning, and RV parking. But is it really sustainable?
By Jonathan Lerner
June 2002
 |
 |
CANYON OF THE EAGLES LODGE AND NATURE PARK,
BURNET, TEXAS
Developers worked with the Texas Parks and Wildlife department to create
an 18-building resort compound on a 904-acre preserve on Lake Buchanan.
Open dogtrot corridors and corrugated-metal roofs (above) are part of an
architectural style borrowed from Texas hill-country vernacular.
|
 |
|
 |
Recreational opportunities include a swimming pool and whirlpool
surrounded by local limestone rocks (above, right) and the Eagle's Nest
lounge (below), which has games and a bar.
|
 |
Photos: Wyatt McSpadden
|
Think of "ecotourism" and you picture a dozen huts with cold showers
under a rain-forest canopy. That hardly describes Couran Cove. This three-year-old
resort, on a barrier island off subtropical Queensland, Australia, accommodates
1,300 guests in 357 units that range from studios to four-bedroom villas.
Couran Cove's structures, by Sydney architect Daryl Jackson, have all the
bold simplicity of Australian Modernism. Though the property covers 375
acres, most of the buildings cluster villagelike around the edge of a lagoon
or are set right over the water and entered from a wide boardwalk that functions
as a promenade. Others are snuggled into the low shade of a banksia forest.
Raised on pilings, with generous decks and batten sunshades, the buildings
are keyed to the climate. And they're made of unpretentious materials long
familiar in Queensland: corrugated iron, stained timber, painted weatherboard.
But austere lodgings for would-be Aussie bushwhackers these are not. Even
studio units have kitchenettes, carpeted living and sleeping areas, air-conditioning,
and TV--and sumptuous bathrooms with marble-tiled floors and walls.
The Australians are perfecting a type of tourism property that's likely
to make an appearance soon in a natural area near you: the large-scale ecoresort.
On nearby Fraser Island--a UN World Heritage site--Kingfisher Bay has
a 152-room hotel, 110 villas, and a 114-bed wilderness lodge. Meanwhile
in Texas the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) has opened the first
of three, at Canyon of the Eagles, near Burnet. It has 64 guest rooms in
an 18-building compound, plus tenting sites and bays for recreational vehicles;
another project, near Austin, will have as many as 500 rooms. On an oceanfront
peninsula in Sri Lanka, the 84 bungalows of locally crafted brick and tile
at Ranweli Holiday Village were sited into the agricultural grid of an old
coconut plantation; columns for the covered breezeways are the trunks of
trees removed to make room for the development. At Punta Mangle, Dominican
Republic, the environmental focuses--mangrove forest and coral-reef habitats--will
be complemented by a sophisticated, spiritually oriented wellness program.
The resort, set for ground-breaking this year, will comprise a marina and
a 98-room hotel, with future plans for 40 "luxurious investor villas,"
each with a private pool.
Can giants like these really be green? If it's as comfortable as a Marriott,
will guests learn anything that changes their behavior toward the environment?
Developers, designers, regulators, hoteliers, and travel writers are currently
haggling over standards for certifying the environmental friendliness of
ecoresorts. Meanwhile architect and landscape designer Hitesh Mehta of EDSA,
an international planning and landscape architecture firm based in
Ft. Lauderdale, challenges such developments to address three central issues.
First, they must consider the impact on their own properties and surrounding
natural areas, and be, Mehta says, "proactive in helping to conserve,
through design or through operations." He gives as an example a detail
from EDSA's site plan for Punta Mangle: an existing road diked across a
tidal flat now prevents tidewater from reaching a stand of mangroves,
which is consequently dying; in constructing the resort, the road will be
removed, restoring the flow. A second criterion is environmental education
for resort visitors. The third--regardless, Mehta says, of economic disparity
or equality between tourists and locals--is involving and benefiting
neighboring communities. Each of these ostensibly well-meaning projects
arrives at its own mix of responses. But is there a scale beyond which a
resort is simply not environmentally friendly?
"Each case demands particular study," says Mexico City architect
Hector Ceballos-Lascuráin, who has worked on many of them and is
special advisor on ecotourism to the World Conservation Union. "It
has to do with the particular environment and how vulnerable it is. But
it's pretty sure that if you make an ecolodge too small, it's going to be
difficult for it to be a profitable business."
|
|
|
BACK TO TOP
