‘A very chic tree house’: pilot’s remote Hong Kong home comes with wooden sauna and an unsteady ladder to reach the bedroom
- A pilot poured more than US$200,000 into the renovation of a remote Hong Kong apartment, with no purpose behind the design ‘other than doing what I like’
- The flat at Sea Ranch on Lantau Island, a failed five-star resort built in the 1970s, has an infrared sauna, a 180kg bathtub and a huge eye-level fireplace
Like most Hong Kong residents, the first time Andrew De Caro saw Sea Ranch he was on a ferry to Macau. When he caught a glimpse as he passed Lantau’s south side, he thought it looked fabulous.
He assumed the flats must be expensive. That was 2006 and De Caro, originally from Boston, in the United States, had just arrived in the city.
He didn’t know that The Sea Ranch, as it was officially named – although, like so much of the development, the “The” fell into disuse – was a failure.
It had been built as a five-star resort by Hutchison Whampoa in the late 1970s, years before the nearby resort-style residential development Discovery Bay. It had no access road: the only approach was by private ferry or a two-hour hike across Lantau Island.
I’m a very visual person. And in Hong Kong, real estate seems to be the best outlet for me, creativity-wise
In 1983, Hutchison pulled out and left it to the residents to manage. Acrimony ensued. By the end of the century, many of the 200 units had begun their long, silent moulder under a subtropical sky.
In 2009, De Caro, who is a pilot for one of Hong Kong’s wealthier families, bought his first Sea Ranch flat. It cost HK$1.2 million for 1,250 square feet (116 square metres). On a liveability scale from one to 10, he reckons it was about “a two, maybe a three”.