Paradise found
Brothers ready to be good Neighbors
Brothers ready to be good Neighbors

By Richard Mize

Published: October 5, 2007

They went for coffee and came back with condos.

That's the story in a nutshell — or a java bean.

Of course, just as Neighbors Coffee's blends, dark roasts and flavored brews are richer than the average joe, Steve and Fred Neighbors' adventure with investing in condos in Costa Rica is a little more complex than the standard real estate development deal.

But not that much. One thing the Neighbors brothers and their development partners, Tom Parrish and Merrill Likes, found early on is that the business climate in Costa Rica isn't radically different from Oklahoma.

Except for the beach.

Steve and Fred Neighbors started Neighbors Coffee in Oklahoma City in 1972. By the late '80s, the company, with offices here and in Texas, had ground out its own niche as a gourmet coffee roaster specializing in the executive-office coffee market.

Trips to coffee-growing regions soon became part of the enterprise: Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America and Central America — Costa Rica.

"We found that Costa Rica was not like any other country. We go all over South America and Central America to buy coffee, and Costa Rica is really a much different country,” Steve Neighbors said.

Costa Rica, population 4.1 million, is friendly to business and development and politically steady with a large, stable middle class. The Neighbors brothers knew Costa Rica was a great source for coffee. In the early '90s, they discovered it was a great place to live.

"After the first trip down. It just amazed us,” Steve Neighbors said, noting that encountering English speakers and U.S. dollars everywhere helped.

They spied a few acres for sale on the Pacific beach next to Manuel Antonio National Park, Costa Rica's smallest national park at 4,000-some acres but one of its most beautiful and popular, near the city of Quepos. They bought the property and planned to build homes away from home for themselves.

But before long they noticed something: They weren't the only ones wanting to own property in Costa Rica. In fact, there was something of a boom on.

The Neighbors brothers, their eyes dazzled first as vacationers, started seeing dollar signs — and they were dollar signs, not colon signs. The Costa Rican national currency is based on the colon, but they found that Costa Ricans like the U.S. dollar so much it is almost the de facto national currency — which made doing business even easier.

Thus was born the idea for LightHouse Resort & Spa. The Neighbors bought a few more acres. Now, construction is under way and four of a planned 53 condos are sold.

Seven buildings are planned with spaces ranging from 1,214 square feet at $295,000 to $1.2 million at 3,317 square feet. Reflecting the moderate climate and lifestyle, the sizes include air-conditioned space, balconies and accesses.

The Neighbors brothers, Likes and Parrish, have no doubt that the $30 million project will succeed.

For one, they said, they did it right from the start, unlike some foreign investors who think they can sweep and bribe officials to ease the way only to find out the influence disappears with the official as the government changes.

It took them three years alone to get the building permits for LightHouse Resort & Spa. Its location abutting the popular and pristine Manuel Antonio National Park made it difficult at times.

"If we cut down a tree, it might cost us a $50,000 fine,” Parrish said. He added that respecting the biodiversity of the area is worth it: "Monkeys come up and play on the porch.”

For another, despite a housing slowdown in the United States, Costa Rica as a place to live part time, or in retirement, is still popular. The low cost of living makes it attractive. Fred Neighbors said someone could live comfortably at LightHouse Resort & Spa on an income, or draw on savings, of $40,000 per year.

Three years ago, U.S. investors were buying 60 percent of similar property in Costa Rica and there were three flights a day from the United States, Fred Neighbors said. Now, he said, Californians alone are buying the same amount of property and there are a dozen flights per day with more planned.

Likes said having locals on the ground in Costa Rica to handle day-to-day tasks of doing business is allowing he and his fellow investors to watch LightHouse Resort & Spa grow from a distance. Of, course the men make regular trips, with their families, to see the progress themselves.

And the Neighbors brothers are, after all, still in the coffee business first, and it still takes them abroad.

The investors said they know that not everyone in Oklahoma knows what they know about Costa Rica:

It's not Venezuela with its angry socialist anti-American President Hugo Chavez, or Bolivia, whose President Evo Morales might seem sketchy to Americans because of his recent joint statements with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on nuclear energy, or Nicaragua, for whom many Americans harbor concerns that linger from the country's experience with Marxist revolutionaries.

It's Costa Rica. It's pro-development and pro-business, they said.

Most importantly, Steve Neighbors said: "We want people here to know that when they get down there, they're safe.”

The way the Neighbors brothers, Parrish and Likes see it, Costa Rica life is as smooth, but as invigorating, as an iced latte on a warm day.

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