How many times has this town been told a marina is coming?
Ask anyone who has owned property in Playas del Coco for more than a decade, and the marina question gets a knowing pause before the answer. Not because the project is a joke. Because it has been circling for so long that longtime residents file it next to the rainy season forecast: mentioned constantly, rarely trusted, revisited every year or two with fresh confidence. On January 31, 2025, the Municipality of Carrillo signed a concession contract with ASODEMAC, the private association behind the project, formalizing a marina that Costa Rica's tourism institute first blessed back in 2008. Seventeen years separate those two dates. What actually moved in between tells a buyer more than the headline does.
The Marina Has Been Approved Before
This is not Coco's first announcement. It is roughly the third.
In 2008, Costa Rica's National Tourism Institute gave initial approval to a marina concept for the Punta Centinela area near Coco, envisioning nearly 300 yacht slips and a full commercial waterfront. That approval landed the same year the U.S. housing market cracked and the Great Recession spread through Costa Rica's tourism sector, and the project was shelved.
By 2013, local sources and Guanacaste realtors were again reporting renewed activity, with expectations that construction would begin "later this year." It didn't. The project sat dormant for another decade.
On November 3, 2023, the Carrillo municipal council voted to approve the project again, a moment residents celebrated as a long-overdue win. Then, on January 31, 2025, the actual concession contract was signed between the municipality and ASODEMAC, with Costa Rica's Inter-institutional Commission for Marinas and Tourist Piers (CIMAT) confirming that the technical, environmental, and maritime engineering review was complete.
| Milestone | Date | What It Actually Secured |
|---|---|---|
| ICT initial approval | 2008 | Government endorsement, no committed funding |
| "Activity" reported by realtors | 2013 | Renewed attention, no groundbreaking |
| Municipal council vote | Nov. 3, 2023 | Local political will, still no contract |
| Concession contract signed | Jan. 31, 2025 | Private funding and full technical sign-off, both in place |
What's Actually Different About the 2025 Signature
The earlier milestones were permission slips. The 2025 concession is a binding legal contract with a funded private party attached to it. ASODEMAC has committed $24.5 million in private capital to build the marina across 25 hectares, with 299 slips for vessels ranging from 12 to 40 meters, plus a harbor master's office, customs and immigration facilities, a fueling station, and an ice plant. CIMAT's sign-off means the environmental and technical review, the step that has stalled comparable projects elsewhere on this coast, is finished rather than pending.
That funding structure matters more than the announcement itself. Public approval can sit on a shelf for a decade and a half when a recession hits or a budget cycle shifts. Private capital that's already committed doesn't disappear the same way. CIMAT director Luis Lemus described the project's intent plainly:
"This marina will not only be a port infrastructure but also an economic development engine and a symbol of sustainable progress for Playas del Coco."
That optimism is genuine, and it is not universal. Residents, expatriates, and environmentalists have voiced real concerns about what 300 new boat slips and the commercial buildout around them will do to a town that has grown around a quieter working beach. Both things are true at once: a funded contract now exists, and the people who live here haven't stopped asking what it changes about daily life.
The Completion Date Still Hasn't Moved
Even with financing and technical approval locked in, the project's own timeline puts completion three to five years out from the start of construction, which lands somewhere between 2028 and 2030. The first phase alone covers an access road and dredging and filling the water channel, before any dock or building work begins.
Buying today on the assumption that a marina will be operating soon means buying a multi-year hold, not a finished amenity. That's a different decision than buying a property with a marina view that already exists.
What's Already Built, Not Just Signed
The more useful comparison for a buyer right now isn't the marina contract. It's the capital that has already moved dirt nearby without waiting for one.
The Ritz-Carlton Reserve's Nekajui development, on the hillsides between Coco and the northern edge of the Gulf of Papagayo, had already broken ground with 36 private villas advertised under $6 million each. The Waldorf Astoria project on Cacique mountain, situated between Playa del Coco and Playa Hermosa, was already under active construction by late 2023. Neither brand waited for a signed concession to commit capital to this stretch of coastline. On a smaller scale, a private landowner's Plaza Nino commercial center, five structures including a Banco Popular branch, was already reported in progress in 2023 as well.
None of that depends on the marina opening in 2028. It's already happening in 2026.
What Flamingo's Actual Record Should Tell You
If you want to know what a completed Guanacaste marina does to a beach town's property market, the honest place to look isn't Coco's press release. It's Playa Flamingo's lived experience.
Marina Flamingo took roughly a decade of planning and permitting before its public inauguration on February 19, 2023, less than 30 kilometers from Coco. That marina is no longer a promise. It has been open and operating for more than three years. A buyer weighing Coco's marina timeline against a purchase decision would learn more from studying how Flamingo's market actually behaved across those three years than from anything in Coco's latest signing ceremony.
Price Bands Don't Absorb the Same Story
The marina's eventual arrival doesn't touch every part of Coco's market the same way.
Entry-level condos in communities like Las Palmas, where a furnished one-bedroom currently runs around $165,000 with HOA fees near $250 a month, and studio units in developments like Vista Hermosa priced around $135,000, sit inland from the water and depend on short-term rental turnover for their returns, not yacht traffic. A marina that opens in 2028 or later changes very little about that rental math today.
Ocean-view homes in gated communities like Pacifico, Coco Bay Estates, and Monte Mar occupy a different tier entirely, generally from around $800,000 up past $1.45 million for larger properties with pool and panoramic Gulf views. Those properties carry more exposure on both sides of this story: more genuine upside if the marina lands on schedule this time, and more years of dredging, road construction, and dock-building visible from a hillside terrace before any of it becomes a benefit rather than a disruption.
Questions Worth Asking Before the Marina Becomes Your Reason to Buy
- Has ASODEMAC's $24.5 million actually been deployed toward construction, or is it still sitting as a committed but undrawn figure?
- What does the concession contract obligate the developer to complete, and by what date, with what consequence if the timeline slips again?
- How did property values in Flamingo actually move in the three years since its marina opened, rather than in the years it was only rumored to open?
- Is the specific property you're considering close enough to eventually benefit from finished marina infrastructure, or close enough to absorb years of construction noise first?
- What's your plan if 2028 becomes 2032, the way earlier estimates did?
None of these questions are unanswerable. They just require someone who has watched this particular story rerun before to walk through them with you honestly.
Murphy has had this exact conversation with buyers who remember the 2013 version of this headline as clearly as the 2025 one. If you're weighing a property in Playas del Coco against the marina's timeline, or trying to work out which price band actually stands to gain from what's already under construction nearby, Miles & Co can walk through the concession contract, the Flamingo comparison, and your specific numbers together. Let's Connect.
