In July 2022, a developer offered $16M to buy Yoko South. I asked if he would keep the community we had promised. He said no. He would build as many houses as he could. So I said no.
I believed I was protecting a promise. My ego was in there too. I fell in love with the vision, and too much with myself as the person behind it.
Turning down that offer was, in my judgment now, a major mistake.
By late 2022, the COVID rush was fading. I underestimated that change. I also underestimated the people opposing the project. They had more money, local knowledge and influence than I did.
We did beach cleanups, helped a school install hot showers and supported a wildlife sanctuary. But to some people, we were the big foreign development making the town more expensive. We didn't help ourselves. We put up too many signs and drove too many branded cars, and they poked people in the eye.
Part of that was true. We were part of the gentrification, even while I wanted to build something good. I kept telling myself people would understand once we finished. But we had to survive long enough to finish.
In 2024, after waiting three years, we finally got the titles for both Yoko North and Yoko South. A few weeks later, the new mayor took office, filed a claim and annotated all the titles at Yoko South. The titles were not blocked. They were annotated. But that made the lots much harder to sell.
At the same time, interest rates and the economy had changed, and social media campaigns against me as the founder were running in parallel.
Then some politicians went on national TV in Costa Rica and claimed there was corruption in Costa Rican institutions. They named Yoko Village a few times as part of it. That claim about Yoko was false. But it led the trust that held all the properties, set up to protect buyers, to stop us from selling more titles. For about eight months we could not sell anything. Together, all of this led to a slow financial death for Yoko.
My written story stops here, in mid-2024. Read where things stand today.