Puerto Rico Is Beginning to Live Up to Its Name

Debarking from the cruise ship that had brought me to this Caribbean island, I found myself on a large wharf surrounded by people catering to the needs of arriving cruise passengers.

“Do you need a taxi?” a cabbie asked. “No,” I said. “I’m just going to La Princesa.”

“Ah,” he said with a smile, “you’re on your way to jail.”

I must admit I didn’t get the joke until I walked the few blocks to the restored building that is now the headquarters of all Puerto Rican tourism.

La Princesa, polished and painted and restored, was built in 1837. However, Miguel Domenich, executive director of Puerto Rican Tourist Co., proves it was once a jail by escorting visitors to the small, rusted old cells that once were the quarters of prisoners.

Although it still is reputed to be the local jail, La Princesa expects this Spanish colonial building to set the style for historic old San Juan. Skylights let sunlight through to its polished floors and tropical plantings add color to its painted walls and to the stone cliffs that back against its spacious courtyard.

La Princesa, however, is just the beginning. On the drawing boards is a tree-lined promenade, the paseo, that in other days stretched the short blocks to the port. Public areas for dances, concerts and festivals also are part of the master plan. So is a fisherman’s pier and fish market. The famed rums of Puerto Rico will have their own shop.

More than 800,000 passengers arrived in San Juan last year, and future estimates indicate the trend is up.

The waterfront master plan, with its $7.6-million initial offering, is full of major projects that in 1992 will celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the New World.

La Princesa, originally inaugurated on the birth date of Princess Asturias of Spain in 1837, had been closed for 13 years. However, with its huge mahogany doors and gleaming brass, it hardly looks like a former prison.

Nearly 3 million visitors last year saw El Morro, the fortress built in 1540, La Fortaleza, the oldest executive mansion in continuous use in the New World, and the Casa Blanca, built for Ponce de Leon, the island’s first governor.

In the last five years more than $500 million has been invested by hotel companies. There is the giant one-mile swim-way that went into Hyatt’s Cerromar and the total remake of the Normandie by the Radisson chain. Handy to the Caribe Hilton, the Normandie was built in the shape of the ill-fated but celebrated ship of the French Line.

It remained unused for years but has been turned into a gem that would please the French wife of Feliz Rexach Benitez, who built this Art Deco masterpiece for her.

The Normandie reopened last year with 180 rooms, 115 of them Art Deco suites. The $17-million restoration includes the Normandie restaurant that serves everything from sliced baby squid over linguine to stuffed pig’s foot in Madeira sauce with steamed cabbage. A profiterolle mousse in papaya sauce gives it a French and a Puerto Rican flavor.

A Day’s Inn has opened 120 rooms in Ponce, and Puerto Rico will get its own Ritz Carlton in Palmas del Mar. Also, El Conquistador, long asleep, will awaken with 900 rooms, a golf course, a marina, a convention center and a spa.

Near the Conquistador in Fajardo, which is an hour’s drive from the airport, will be the $350-million Puerto de Rey Marina and Beach Resort. The first phase, with a marina larger than any on the U.S. Eastern seaboard, is open. A harborside inn is due next year. It will be followed by a 325-room hotel, 1,000 condominiums, a golf course and tennis and beach clubs.

Here architects returned to the original idea of King Carlos of Spain who sent explorers, engineers and architects to the island in the 16th Century.

They envisioned a Mediterranean adapted to the West Indies with waterfront towns huddling around plazas. If your yacht is no larger than 200 feet, there will be room to accommodate it and 700 others.

On the northwest coast near the town of Isabella, Costa Isabella, the largest recreational project ever conceived in these parts, is under way, headed by Charlie Passarell Jr., the former Puerto Rican tennis star.

A $1-billion, 2,500-acre vacation and residential complex, Costa Isabella has already involved Four Seasons Hotels, Conrad International and the Marbella Club of Spain, all to be built around a 19th-Century-style Spanish village. Ultimately, Costa Isabella could have up to 2,000 hotel rooms.

Obviously, Puerto Rico is becoming rich. Just how rich, however, its discoverers never imagined.