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Private Fantasy Islands
Jeryl Brunner October 31, 2007
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Super elite isles from Fiji to the Med
It’s usually love at first sight.
Ask most private island owners about the first time they laid eyes on their personal floating paradise, and they will describe a near epiphany.
“If you go shopping for islands at sunset,” explains real estate developer Jeff Gram, “you’d better take your checkbook, because you’ll end up buying.” Gram owns Cayo Espanto, a private island and intimate luxury resort just three miles off the coast of Belize. Tiger Woods, Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart are among the celebrities who have touched down on its azure shores; and Leonardo DiCaprio was so smitten with the place, that he co-purchased (with Gram) an island called Blackadore, just a few clicks down the watery block.
See our slideshow of 10 Private Fantasy Islands.
Private island ownership has long been a favorite sport of the rich and famous. In 1965, Marlon Brando became so enchanted with French Polynesia while filming Mutiny on the Bounty that he purchased the jeweled outpost of Tetiaroa, 26 miles north of Tahiti. Graced with a pristine lagoon and surrounded by 13 motu (little islands), Tetiaroa possesses a tranquil ambience that clearly got under Brando’s skin.
"My mind is always soothed,” the actor wrote in his autobiography, “when I imagine myself sitting on my South Sea island at night."
Brando’s stint as mid-ocean landlord obviously spoke to a trend. Shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis bought the Greek island of Skorpios (where he not only married Jacqueline Kennedy, but was also buried, outside the island’s private church). Ted Turner picked up the title to the balmy St. Phyllis Island in South Carolina. And more recently, Johnny Depp acquired a 35-acre deserted island called Little Hall’s Pond Cay in the Exumas. Fellow isle owners in that sparkling blue neighborhood include Nicolas Cage, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
“Owning an island is exclusivity on steroids,” offers Adam Stewart, CEO of Sandals and Beaches Resorts. “When you are famous, you are constantly bombarded. Imagine if you could get on plane, and fly over your own body of water and see so many different shades of blue that it looks like it’s been color-corrected. Then you end up in absolute solitude.”
Sanctuary from the world-at-large is, indeed, the primary perk of island ownership. And these days, even the most remote isles can be outfitted with Internet service and satellite TV, so out-of-sight doesn’t necessarily mean out-of-touch. “You can be as comfortable and hooked in as if you were in Manhattan,” comments Jeff Gram, who even installed a chrysanthemum misting system on Cayo Espanto to keep mosquitoes away.
“Even the smallest islands are unique and special,” adds Cheyenne Morrison of Coldwell Banker Morrison’s Private Islands. “Each one possesses its own mystical attraction. They are settings for mystery, buried treasure and romance. And you can change the name once you buy it, and leave your mark on atlases for generations.”
See our slideshow of 10 Private Fantasy Islands.
In addition to permitting its proprietors to live inside a picture postcard, private islands also offer the lucky owners an authentic final frontier—one whose destiny they can actually control. When Fiji Water founder and CEO David Gilmour purchased Wakaya in that South Pacific island nation, he’d specifically been seeking a land mass that was completely unspoiled.
“I circled the island in a chartered plane three times,” Gilmour remembers, “and I knew that I wanted it. It had 2,200 acres of paradise, 30 beaches, palm groves, soaring cliffs and a perfect reef protecting the island.” And while he has since been offered hefty sums to sell the island—and the exclusive Wakaya Club resort that he built there—he always says no.
“We will never have more than 14 couples,” says Gilmour of the property, which draws celebrities including Tom Cruise, Bill Gates and Celine Dion. “Wakaya is priceless in my life, the last bastion of sanity.”
Another unique charm of lording over one’s own Eden is the long-forgotten practice of self-sustenance. “We’ve built the wheel a few times,” offers Haze Richardson, who in 1966 built a resort from scratch on his Caribbean island, Petit St. Vincent. “We make our own cars, bake bread, raise chickens for eggs, and grow our own lettuce and vegetables. I’m proud to own it.”
Still, paradise has a price. “There are a ton of reasons not to own one—they’re a pain,” admits David M. Michonski, CEO of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, who has sold luxury real estate worldwide for 25 years. “You have to get your own water supply, generate electricity, create waste disposal, build a dock or an airstrip and handle the security when they’re not there. And the maintenance and repair is staggering.”
And yet, at the end of the day (which, on a private island, is invariably greeted by a jaw-dropping sunset), many owners wouldn’t trade their lives for the world.
“I wanted an island ever since I was a kid watching Gilligan’s Island,” says Cayo Espanto’s Jeff Gram. “When I take someone famous to see an island they might want to buy, I watch their faces. Here are people who have everything—billionaires and movie stars—and you can see the excitement overtake them, the twinkle in their eye. They start to daydream and become like children.”
Yes, it’s good to be a child again. At least a really rich one.
See our slideshow of 10 Private Fantasy Islands.
