Words J. MICHAEL WELTON, photography COURTESY OF COSTA PALMAS MARINA
Costa Palmas Marina is a yacht owner's paradise on the Sea of Cortez.
Some say the beating heart of Costa Palmas on the Sea of Cortez in Mexico’s Baja lies within the luxury of the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Los Cabos. Others believe that honor should be owned by Amanvari, with its soon-to-open resort and residences and a name derived from the Sanskrit words for “peace and water.”
But they’d both be wrong.
The center of this universe, located on 1,500 acres just 45 minutes from Los Cabos International Airport, is the Costa Palmas Marina. “We have 35 slips available for yachts up to 150 feet,” says Francesca Greco, manager of membership at the Costa Palmas Yacht Club. And that’s just its first phase. When its second is completed, 300 slips for vessels up to 250 feet will be available.
The marina’s future hasn’t always looked so promising. When its original developers failed to dredge deeply enough, visiting yachts could get stuck. Greco came on board in 2023, and her first challenge was to jumpstart the dredging process. The second? Regaining the trust of yacht owners—and persuading them to return.
Two years ago, the marina opened to the public and owners of yachts from 60 to 70 feet were invited for the season. For the first time, the Costa Palmas Marina filled up.
And Greco focused on a California clientele. “We have a lot of owners from Los Angeles and Newport Beach, so we said: ‘Why not relocate your boats here?’” she says. “And about six of them decided to relocate their boats to Costa Palmas.”
The earliest phase of the Four Seasons opened on the East Cape of Los Cabos in 2019. Its popularity lay not only in its views of the Sea of Cortez, but for its dockside residences on the marina too. “There’s nowhere anywhere on the West Coast with ocean views and a dock 20 feet away,” says Michael Radovan, managing director of the Irongate Group, owner and developer of all resort and residential Costa Palmas properties.
One hundred and twenty-five families have already moved into the Four Seasons’ two-bedroom condos, its four-bedroom and larger homes, and those in between. Another 100 units are in the design phase or have started construction. “We’ve been busy—the infrastructure is finished and we can build out fairly fast,” he says.
The final Four Seasons-branded neighborhood is the Marina Cove collection. It’s located next to the Costa Palmas Marina (the only one offered worldwide by Four Seasons) and features limited casitas and residences starting at $4.4 and $5.5 million, respectively.
Because the marina residences are on the water, they’re designed to provide owners with a sense of place—and a link to natural surroundings. “It creates a connection between a person and the environment, whether mountains or water” says Tyler Jorgenson, design director at Irongate. “The architecture itself should stand down from that.”
Jorgenson is well-versed in the art of integrating architecture, interior design, and landscape into nature. He’s a graduate of the University of Arizona, whose College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture is a known hotbed for sustainable design. He’s worked with Studio Rick Joy, the cutting-edge architecture firm based in Tucson, as well as SHoP, the New York firm known for its design of 111 West 57th Street, one of Manhattan’s tallest and most recognized new towers.
But at Costa Palmas, Jorgensen and his team looked to lessons learned from the Brazilian modernist Oscar Niemeyer, a Pritzker Prize- winning architect known for his work in the International Style during the 1960s in Brasilia.
Here, the architecture is not monumental but designed for a casual and elemental luxury. “Niemeyer’s influence is in how it’s low and beautiful, and how it gets out of the way,” he says.
Sure, there are the Robert Trent Jones II golf course, the beach and yacht club, the sports park, the 13 culinary venues, the orchards and farms, the mountain trails, and the water sports on the Sea of Cortez. But here, the landscape and architecture respond to site conditions and the profile of its clientele. “It’s not just another golf resort, but a real community,” he says. “We do events and use them in different capacities, from large weddings to small, farm-to-table dinners.”
Its response to nature, too, is palpable. Once-overgrown freshwater estuaries for birds and wildlife now have been restored, with amenities built up around them at the beach club overlooking the Sea of Cortez. Sea turtle nests are protected, and a hatchery has been established. “We bring eggs to the hatchery, and then help turtles back to the ocean,” he says.
The bottom line: This is a new kind of culture, created to maximize the human experience in nature. And its heart beats strongest at the Costa Palmas Marina, where yachts, homes, and the Sea of Cortez mingle and beckon.
