Before the court injunction, Las Catalinas was finally gaining traction. In addition to the 10 houses already built, 10 more lots are under contract, and the sale of another five is being negotiated. Construction of the hotel-which will feature freestanding villas renting for $300 to $400 a night-could begin this year. And now that he has something to show buyers, Brewer is moving beyond word-of-mouth marketing to a conventional advertising campaign.
During a recent visit to his own Las Catalinas home, Claugus sat shirtless, doing calculations on a laptop computer, ignoring the spectacular seascape out his window.
"I think we're going to make a lot of money on this project," he says. "I thought it would happen a lot sooner."
'Vision Driven'
Claugus and Brewer couldn't be more different in their approach to business and to life. Brewer, an Amherst College and Stanford University grad, once played guitar in a corporate rock band and spends his weekends mountain biking and hiking. He said his philosophy when he ran MindSpring was to avoid being "stuffy and boring" and to apply a business version of the Golden Rule.
"I am very exuberant and vision driven," he says.
The silver-haired Claugus is a self-made billionaire with a bias for hard data. He has spent the past two decades searching out undervalued businesses for his hedge fund, GMT Capital Corp. When he finds a promising company, he sits its managers down and asks them to explain clearly in 20 minutes how they're going to make money.
Claugus's no-nonsense investment style has earned millions for his investors. GMT's oldest fund, Bay Resource Partners LP, returned an average of 17% annually in the 19 years ended on December 31-and that includes a 7.9% loss last year. Claugus and his team of 14 portfolio managers and analysts run three funds with a total of $4.8 billion from Atlanta's leafy northern suburbs.
In his own domain, Claugus is a demanding boss. One way a GMT analyst gets fired is by ignoring data that contradict his or her investment thesis, he said. So what's at risk for Claugus in the Costa Rican venture is pride, especially since the town's struggles coincide with his hedge fund's 2011 loss.
"You wonder, man, am I losing it?" he says.
The success or failure of Las Catalinas is mostly in Brewer's hands, since he's the managing partner. His model is Seaside, a planned community on the Florida Panhandle where pedestrians are more important than cars and daily life is organized around a central hub. Brewer says he also took inspiration from his visits to Mediterranean hill towns, where he admired the narrow pedestrian streets, intriguing passageways and welcoming public spaces.
In Costa Rica, his plan is to develop no more than 20% of the site; the rest will be hiking and bike trails and tropical dry forest. Brewer and Claugus hope to build as many as 2,000 homes. The first 10 are all assembled around Beach Town, an already-operating retail center anchored by an open-air pavilion set above a bustling bar and restaurant, Lola's del Norte. On a sunny, 75-degree day earlier this year, patrons sat on bar stools made of varnished tree trunks and washed down fresh ceviche with cold Landshark beer.