KEY POINTS:
A landmark South Pacific coastal property that once housed Fiji's inaugural pioneering tourism resort, where the term "bure" was first used to describe individual bungalow-styled accommodation units, has been put on the market.
Thirty hectares of land at Korolevu on Fiji's Coral Coast, halfway between Nadi and Suva, is being marketed by Philip Toogood who manages Bayleys' office in Fiji.
The prime beachfront development land was home to two of Fiji's earliest luxury resorts: the Korolevu Beach Hotel developed in the 1950s and the adjacent Paradise Point Hotel built in the 1960s.
The land straddles the Queens Highway linking Nadi with Suva and comprises nine freehold titles totalling 26ha, three contiguous native leases comprising 4.3ha, and a Crown lease to the deep water access for a mere $2 per annum.
The former Korolevu Beach Hotel is steeped in the history of Fijian tourism trade. Constructed in the 1950s, the small, self-contained units were believed to be the first of their type in the world, setting the standard for resort developments everywhere by imitating indigenous architecture.
Original proprietor Bill Clark once confided to a friend it was economics that prompted his design choice for the individual accommodation units, since local villagers could build them for a fraction of the cost of building Western-style buildings. He also wanted to recreate a typical Fijian village setting for international tourists and hence the construction of the bures designed to look like Fijian wood and thatched huts.
In the decades which followed, Clark acknowledged that the Fijian word bure originally referred to a temple or similar official building and that the individual units should really have been called valevakaviti, which translates as "Fijian-style houses". However, Clark rightly reasoned that tourists could never get their tongues around the name valevakaviti, and so bure came into common usage.
Clark got much of his inspiration for Korolevu after travelling to Honolulu and seeing how indigenous tourism was rapidly evolving on the island. He brought back such innovations as a lounge bar, building accommodation blocks facing out to sea views and landscaped natural vegetation around the bures.
Clark also featured Fijian-themed entertainment and feasts every night and introduced cultural shows to educate guests about "local" ways of life.
In their heyday during the 1950s and 60s and even into the 1970s, Korolevu Beach Resort and Paradise Point Hotel were known as "Fiji's Riviera". Colonial expatriates from the UK, Australia and New Zealand flocked to the resorts from their bases in Nadi and Suva.
"Martinis flowed like water, the parties were wild and families also enjoyed the wide, open expanse of land and safe swimming beaches," Toogood says.
The partying colonials were joined by large numbers of American tourists flown in by Pan American Airlines whose planes flying across the Pacific had to stop at Fiji to refuel before heading on to Auckland or Sydney. Added to the customer mix were the air crews from Pan Am, BOAC, Qantas, and Air New Zealand who helped to make the hotel renowned for its lively atmosphere.
Sadly, two unrelated events saw both the Korolevu Beach Resort and Paradise Point Hotel close down in 1983.
A major hurricane that year destroyed power lines around the Coral Coast and caused substantial damage to the region's infrastructure. Many months after the storm struck, the power lines had still not been restored, and without electricity the Paradise Point Hotel could not cater for guests, forcing its closure.
Soon after, a lease-holding dispute at the Korolevu Beach Resort saw all furnishings and fittings disappear one night, leaving the once effervescent hotel stripped of its charm and character. Faced with a massive reinvestment to get the venue up and running again, its owners, who were close to personal retirement, decided to shut down.
They eventually sold the site in 1991 to its current owners who, at the time, had major plans to re-establish a tourism operation on the headland and adjoining hillsides.
Toogood says many potential buyers have visions of restoring the birthplace of Fiji's tourism industry.
"The land is suited to villa, commercial resort and commercial development. It is regarded by many as one of Fiji's finest resort and residential sites because of its all-tide pristine beach and surrounding lush vegetation.
"The vendor's decision to sell offers a great opportunity to secure one of the best beachfront sites on the Coral Coast, with a curving foreshore, a white sandy beach, a good deepwater anchorage and safe swimming waters."
Toogood says it is rare for such a large amount of freehold land, which comprises the bulk of the property, to come up for sale in such a prime coastal location. Less than 10 per cent of land in Fiji is in freehold title.
He says the site fronts both the lengthy beach and adjacent river mouth, offering several water frontage options. There is good access to and from the property through a break in a spectacular reef that is close to the beach.
Magnificent, mature trees - once part of the resorts' splendid gardens - dominate the property. The elevated area overlooking the balance of the land gives magnificent views over beach, bay, reef and beyond to the island of Vatulele.
"Korolevu will appeal to a variety of buyers," Toogood says. "There is considerable variety in terms of the property being offered. The beachfront land is ideally suited to the construction of holiday resorts and very high-end residential properties. Then there's the road frontage with existing shops and the old terminal building.
This area is ideally suited to commercial development.
The rear portion of the site has wonderful views and would potentially make for excellent residential development."
Toogood says the size of the offering allows for more than one tourist resort, with possible combinations of an exclusive boutique resort with some luxury residential villas - perhaps with a management opportunity back to an operator.
Being situated midway between Nadi and Suva, the site is a natural halfway place to create a retail centre with food and beverage facilities.
