When it’s cloudy in Seminyak, there always seems to be clear blue skies over the Bukit. That’s because the Bukit is so HOT! right now.
Since HOT! featured the Bukit in the Autumn 2005 issue, interest in the peninsula has gone through the roof. Prices having skyrocketed and cliff-top land has all but disappeared from the market: except for those developers with the deepest of pockets. All this activity in two short years speaks volumes about the confidence Bali is regaining and the potential that is being realized by many a smart investor.
Hot, arid and spectacularly dramatic, the Bukit has always been sparsely inhabited and was once only the preserve of royal hunting parties and a place of banishment for undesirables. How the Bukit has changed! No longer just a haven for tigers, prisoners and in-the-know surfers, the Bukit’s focus has shifted to one of real estate development, land speculation and luxury living. While the new golf course plans its first tournaments, money is being made at a furious pace as resorts, hotels and multi-million-dollar private homes are designed and built.
And even though land is trading at hundreds of millions of Rupiah per are (100 square metres) there is no stopping this money train. Just to give you an idea of how fast this engine is travelling, cliff-top land on the South Coast is being traded at between 150 to 250 million Rupiah per are: a massive leap from 60 million Rupiah not two years ago. (US$1 buys approximately Rps9000). Buy today and sell tomorrow and make millions no matter what the price. And just like the rest of the world’s hot spots, the bubble is showing no signs of ever bursting.
When Bvlgari threw their dice along the South Coast with their decision to build, they changed the game forever. Landowners were made to realize the value of their once cheap land and it set the prices soaring. Karma Kandara followed suit soon after and many other resorts such as Panorama, Banyan Tree, Angsana, C151 Cliff Villas and Alila are all set to claim their place along some of the most sought after land in Asia.
It’s not only the major resorts that are playing either: many private developments are also underway on properties where each client, within covenants, can design and create their own luxury villa within a managed estate. In Balangan, Exotiq is the lead agency for Ramachandra, a freehold villa development set on four hectares of cliff-top land and Elite Havens is handling the already sold out VIP plots for Pantai Selatan, a series of seven, private, cliff-top villas. They have both sought to bring together all the best aspects of private villas and boutique hotels in this most dramatic of locations.
Without a doubt, the biggest single area of large-scale development is the Pecatu Indah resort, the all too familiar 450-hectare plot of land that runs from the imposing Ramayana statues guarding the entrance, down the seven kilometre road to the North Coast, and ending at Dreamland. New Kuta Beach, as it is being begrudgingly and unoriginally renamed, is open for business with a completed golf course, housing developments such as Hole 17 underway and major hotel groups breaking ground.
The master plan for the development includes shopping facilities, international schools, a retirement village, a water park, clinics and the entire major infrastructure necessary for what is effectively set to be a suburban, gated community. The ancient charm of the surfer warungs (cheap traditional restaurants) and plates of nasi goreng are set to become a thing of the past as new and expensive cafes and bars inevitably take hold.
But speaking of dining, when the sun goes down and hunger starts to bite, your options lie firmly at the top-end of the culinary spectrum. On the Bukit’s southern cliffs sit Karma’s ‘di Mare’ and Bvlgari’s ‘Il Restorante’. Four Seasons and the Ritz Carlton are easily reached on the North Coast, and to the west lay the Amandari, Conrad, The Westin and the entire length of Nusa Dua’s gourmet mile. But easily the most fun is to be had at Jimbaran’s seafood beach restaurants just over the hill. All fantastic, and within easy reach of even the remotest Bukit location.
But, if you still insist on being in the thick of the nighttime action, Seminyak and Legian are only 40 minutes away.
Life in the Bukit is not all about luxury and the pleasures of the palate however. While the Bukit is being flashily marketed across the world there are many problems to be overcome. Water, waste management, overcrowding, roading and power supply amongst the obvious. Development in this part of the world is very loosely regulated and, as we all know, corners are often cut. That said however, many reputable Bali developers have started waking up to the benefits of balancing their resources, having largely been driven by the environmental needs, wants and of consumers.
There are two schools of thought regarding water supply on the Bukit. One that says that Bali can sustain the development and some who say that it can’t. Geologically the Bukit is comprised mainly of extremely porous limestone, which means that any water that falls disappears almost instantly drain down into the rock.
At present most hotels and landowners in the area need to store water, which must be taken during the short rainy season, or taken from very deep underwater wells. There is a huge resource of underground water beneath the Bukit but as town water is currently being piped in and recycled water from the new sewerage system is coming on line, the government may soon start requiring the consumption of town water so it can be regulated.
Even if there is an abundance of water, golf courses and pools have an insatiable thirst and require an awful lot. There could well be problems in the future, so there is a necessity to be responsible in the ecological and conservative use of this precious resource. Solutions such as internal wastewater systems, larger rainwater catchment dependency and the use of grey water for gardening, Biosystems etc, need to be implemented from the very start. An ounce of prevention as they say.
Roading and access is another pressing issue. Many of the Bukit’s roads are in a state of desperate disrepair and a high-quality ring road is essential. The road from Nusa Dua to Bali Cliff hotel exists but is in a shocking state but that is all about to change. Sources say that the long overdue, 46 metre-wide highway connecting Nusa Dua with the Bali Cliffs Hotel will be complete within 18 month, giving fast, first-world access to the South coast. After all, a ten million dollar property with a five-dollar approach road is an oxymoron. Once this happens the Bukit will be wide open for massive further development.
Speaking of all that development: Will the Bukit turn into another overcrowded planning nightmare? According to Richard Homes, a long-term Bali resident, “the chances of a Kuta or Seminyak density problem occurring are low. Bali already has one Kuta and doesn’t need another one! The local government in the Bali cliff area are against any kind of massive build up as has happened in Legian”.
“Chances are that within the next two years, all the cliff-front land will have been developed and the land further in that still has sea views will be sold. It is already being traded and quite high-quality building will be the standard. The Bukit will see ongoing middle- to high-class development, a residential enclave of semi-rural urban development that could be easily sustainable”, he adds.
However you feel about change, progress is progress and you will always find someone bemoaning about how ‘it’s not the same as it was in the good old days’. The ‘good old days’ are a myth, perpetrated by rose-tinted memory failure. Paris too was once an assemblage of smelly wooden huts on an island in the middle of a river: nobody laments the change to that locale, do they?
Like it or not the Bukit will continue to be a place where more and more discerning people want to be. The infrastructure is improving, more restaurants, bars and quality nightspots will open, and Gucci and Louis Vuitton will possibly even open retail outlets to cater to the new demographic.
There will be challenges but then again, they happen everywhere. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed that the master plan is exactly that, a master plan: one that is designed to protect both the people and resources of the Bukit. One that will provide for the future wealth, sustainability and prosperity of Bali as a whole. We live in hope.
By Thomas Jones
