The kingpin of the Medellín Cartel was one of the richest criminals in the world and was once rumored to have offered to pay off Colombia's $10 billion national debt to avoid extradition to the U.S., an offer the government refused. Known as the "King of Cocaine," Escobar ran a drug operation that was said to have provided 80 percent of the world's cocaine by the end of the 1980s.
Casa Malca now features rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows offering oceanfront views and artwork from the owner's private collection including pieces by artists Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. The mansion residence has since been transformed by New York art collector and gallery owner Lio Malca, who bought the complex in 2012 and turned it into a luxury boutique hotel. "Tulum is the most stylish and now destination in all of Latin America," Thor Equities Group chairman Joe Sitt said in a statement.Ĭasa Magna, following a previous reincarnation as an intimate yoga retreat of 22 rooms, now sits unoccupied just down the beach from another former property of Escobar which was abandoned for nearly 20 years after his death in 1993. The property firm, whose other Mexican luxury hotels include the Thompson Playa del Carmen, the Montage Los Cabos and the upcoming Ritz-Carlton in Mexico City (due to open in 2020), expects its latest instalment to thrive in the burgeoning luxury destination where hotel prices can run as high as $2,000 per night, according to Mexico News Daily. Read more El Chapo and Pablo Escobar: Who Built a Bigger Empire?
The Thor group is willing to spend much as $100 million on the new development, which was purchased for $17.5 million, in the hope that the hotel's edgy drug lord-linked past might appeal to the young, hip, beach-loving party crowd of Tulum, which has previously been dubbed the "Williamsburg of Mexico," comparing it with New York City's hipster-magnet Brooklyn neighborhood, Mexico News Daily reports. Originally built in 1992, the former Escobar property sits about a kilometer from the nature reserve Sian Ka'an, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and 15 kilometers from the archaeological region of Tulum, which is home to Mayan ruins and considered to be one of the world's best-preserved Mayan sites. Located in Tulum on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, Casa Magna has been bought by New York real estate firm Thor Equities Group who will be turning Escobar's former Mexican hideaway into a 40-room luxury resort offering a spa and high-end shops, Bloomberg reports.
A Mexican property formerly owned by Pablo Escobar, the late Colombian drug lord, will be transformed into a new $100 million luxury resort.