The Los Frailes site run through the twelve dimensions of the Now City Regenerative Underwriting Framework. This is the underwriting layer beneath the May 2026 development proposal: it takes the proposal's qualitative case, flip the order, Cabo Pulmo from liability to crown jewel, permanent capital, and shows what each claim looks like as a scored dimension with method visible, a native-to-dollar-to-capital translation, an evidence-confidence level, and a citation path.
Los Frailes has not yet run Phase 1. The carrying-capacity study that the proposal asks you to commission is the evidence engine for almost everything below. So every dimension is scored on two separate axes, and the honest current state of the project is the same on the second axis across the board.
A 1 to 5 read on how well-positioned Los Frailes is on this dimension if executed on the Now City method, given the site, the comp set, and the assumed masterplan. This is the ceiling the site can credibly reach.
It is not a claim that the outcome is delivered. It is a claim about what the land and the method make possible.
Where the evidence stands today, on three steps:
Directional Reasoned from the site, the comp set, and method. No primary data yet.
Partial Some primary evidence in hand, gaps remain.
Anchored Primary-source evidence, third-party validated.
The proposal names them: title, water, CONANP, governance. In framework terms they are veto gates. No dimension score below is bankable until all four clear. They are not scored 1 to 5. They are pass, pending, or fail, and today all four are pending. Phase 1 and the formation sprint are built to resolve them, in the right order, before meaningful capital is committed.
East Cape land with ejido-conversion history carries chronic litigation exposure. Collective agrarian rights must be formally converted to private property, dominio pleno, before entitlements can proceed. The comp set shows the cost of getting this wrong: Costa Palmas is the subject of a title-nullification claim registered against its property title, alongside US federal buyer-fraud litigation. Title risk on this coast is not theoretical.
Resolves through: Mexican counsel engaged in Month 1 on title, water, and environment as a single simultaneous engagement. Earnest money only until title is confirmed.
Water is the primary binary failure point in BCS real estate underwriting, and the regional picture is harder than a single-site well study implies. Independent analysis of the East Cape, including work published by Legacy Works, points to a structural water deficit on the order of forty-plus percent over a twenty-year horizon, with coastal-aquifer saltwater intrusion worsening and 2024 the driest year of the century. A well-and-aquifer model alone is unlikely to pencil. The credible water answer probably has to combine an independent supply, most likely solar-powered desalination, with aggressive closed-loop reuse and zero-discharge, and it has to show the project is net-neutral or better on the watershed.
Resolves through: the Sherwood hydrogeological model and full water balance. This is the deliverable the whole formation phase is built around, and it is upstream of the carbon and cost-of-capital dimensions, because the form the water answer takes changes both.
SEMARNAT enforcement of coastal land-use change has made five-to-eight-year permitting cycles routine for large conventional resorts, and the Cabo Pulmo community has used that same process to defeat two well-capitalized mega-developments, Cabo Cortes in 2012 and Cabo Dorado in 2014. The framework read: a sub-40 percent development footprint with a 50 to 60 percent permanent conservation area, filed as a voluntary conservation area with CONANP and co-applied with a credible scientific partner, is what moves the project from a contested commercial review to a strategic one.
Resolves through: MIA scoping in the Sherwood study, the ADVC conservation footprint, and the conservation anchor partnership moving from dialogue to a binding instrument with co-applicant status on the CONANP filing.
A conventional closed-end fund has a wind-down clock and is structurally forced to sell. The proposal's answer is Baja Forward, an evergreen permanent capital vehicle with dual-GP governance and a conservation-anchor co-governance layer. The structure is novel, a Cayman segregated portfolio company with tokenized interests and a regulated secondary market, which is a strength for liquidity-without-forced-exit and a diligence item that legal and the capital architect have to stand behind.
Resolves through: advisory agreements and the dual-GP governance protocol put in binding form in Weeks 1 to 2, the fund vehicle formed, and an evergreen-structure validity check against live institutional comparables. Brianna Gonzalez review is the gating step here.
Outcome potential is the 1 to 5 ceiling read. Evidence confidence is uniformly Directional today and is shown once here rather than repeated. Methodology status is the framework's own read on how mature the measurement approach is, independent of this site.
| Dimension | Outcome potential | Evidence today | Methodology status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Returns · bucket mean 4.0 | |||
| 01 Financial return | 4 | Directional | Established |
| 02 Timeline and carry cost | 4 | Directional | Established |
| Risk · bucket mean 4.0 | |||
| 03 Cost of capital and exit cap | 4 | Directional | Established |
| 04 Resilience value | 4 | Directional | Established |
| Impact · bucket mean 3.8 | |||
| 05 Lifecycle and embodied carbon | 4 | Directional | Established |
| 06 Resource efficiency | 4 | Directional | Established |
| 07 Ecosystem services | 5 | Directional | v1.1 developing |
| 08 Material circularity | 3 | Directional | v1.1 developing |
| 09 Health and wellness | 4 | Directional | Established |
| 10 Community wealth and access | 3 | Directional | v1.1 developing |
| Place · bucket mean 4.0 | |||
| 11 Mobility impact | 3 | Directional | Established |
| 12 Quality of place | 5 | Directional | Established |
The comp validates the demand. Costa Palmas has transacted roughly a billion dollars in real estate twenty kilometers up the same coast, across a pricing band from sub-million-dollar studios to forty-million-dollar homesites. The Now City method is designed to capture that demand while keeping the premium durable: conservation permanence as the moat, an anchor-first sequence where a 30 to 50 key boutique hotel sets the price signal before residential is priced. The honest limit on the score is that there is no pro forma yet. A 4 reflects an exceptional demand setting and a credible value-capture method, not a modeled return.
Carrying capacity sets what the land can hold, which sets program, which sets the pro forma. Until then the IRR is a comp-based expectation, not an underwriting.
NCREIF NPI mixed-use subset, public deal IRRs, internal case files, and the independent hospitality market study named in the formation sprint.
This is where the proposal's central bet lives. The conventional path on this coast runs five-to-eight-year contested permitting cycles. The Now City method front-loads title, water, and CONANP and targets a streamlined environmental review through a sub-40 percent footprint and a conservation partnership, with a six-month formation sprint compressing work that runs sequentially into work that runs in parallel. The upside is large. The score is held at 4 rather than 5 because timeline is the dimension most exposed to the binary gates: if title or water does not clear cleanly, the schedule does not compress, it blows out.
Counsel memos on title, water jurisdiction, and the environmental clearance pathway are the schedule. They convert an unknown permitting horizon into a sequenced critical path.
BCS entitlement benchmarks for comparable scale and posture, plus internal case files, building toward a cohort study as projects close.
Baja Forward is designed to reach capital a conventional resort fund cannot. The evergreen structure, the conservation real right, and a return profile driven by ecological and regulatory factors rather than the cycle position it as a low-correlation instrument, and the proposal names iAlumbra explicitly as a gateway to conservation and philanthropic capital. That widens the stack and should compress blended cost. The score is held at 4, not 5, because the structure is novel: a Cayman segregated portfolio company with tokenized interests is a genuine cost-of-capital advantage and a genuine diligence item at the same time.
Red Clover's evergreen-structure validity check against live institutional comparables, the tokenized LP architecture, and first-draft offering documents. This is also Gate 4.
Program-specific and conservation-capital term sheets, current market data, and the institutional comparables the validity check produces.
Infrastructure sovereignty is a real resilience asset: independent water, solar-primary power with storage, and zero-discharge waste mean the project is not hostage to a single grid, a single water concession, or a single point of failure, and the proposal underwrites a higher operating margin on that basis. The score is held at 4 because the acute-hazard baseline is honestly unquantified. BCS is hurricane-exposed, Hurricane Odile in 2014 is the regional reference event, and the calm Sea of Cortez accumulates brine and effluent faster than an open shore. Resilience here is strong on design intent and pending on hazard data.
The Sherwood study's hazard layer: hurricane, seismic, storm-surge, and brine-assimilation modeling. This converts a design claim into a carrier-legible risk profile.
FEMA-CRS-equivalent scoring, third-party audit, and carrier underwriting feedback on the specific infrastructure spec.
Solar-primary power, electrified systems, district energy, and the option of mass timber and circular materials all point to a strong operational and embodied carbon profile, and a green-bond-eligible profile links this dimension straight back to cost of capital. Two honest qualifiers hold the score at 4: a desert site carries a real cooling load that passive design and solar have to offset, and the embodied number depends heavily on construction methodology, which is not yet specified. Note also the coupling to Gate 2, if the water answer is desalination, that adds energy load and the carbon model has to absorb it.
The energy and storage plan and the construction methodology decision. Both are downstream of the carrying-capacity work and both move the carbon number materially.
Full lifecycle assessment per the ULI Greenprint and RMI Zero-Carbon Building frameworks, materials parsed against an embodied-carbon database.
On a desert coastal site, resource efficiency is not an amenity, it is survival. Independent water, closed-loop reuse, zero-discharge waste, and solar-primary power are the design answer, and they are strong. The score is held at 4 and tightly coupled to Gate 2: the regional aquifer picture, a structural deficit on the order of forty-plus percent over twenty years with worsening saltwater intrusion, means efficiency has to be exceptional just to clear the gate, and the water answer probably has to include desalination. Efficiency here is existential rather than optional, which is a discipline, but it also means there is little margin for the design to underdeliver.
The water balance and the energy and storage plan. These set the intensity numbers and tell you whether the closed-loop design clears the watershed test that CONANP and the community will both apply.
USGBC and ENERGY STAR-equivalent alignment, with utility and metered data integrated post-stabilization.
This is the crown-jewel dimension and the one that speaks most directly to iAlumbra. Cabo Pulmo next door is a documented conservation success, fish biomass recovered roughly 460 percent between 1999 and 2009, inside a UNESCO World Heritage and Ramsar-listed system. Los Frailes can position not as a threat to that system but as an active contributor to it: reef and seagrass restoration, estuary rehabilitation, dune stabilization, dryland agriculture. With iAlumbra's scientific platform and a marine science station, the site can credibly claim a net-positive trajectory on natural systems. The honest qualifier sits in the methodology pill, not the score: ecosystem-services dollarization through credit markets is the framework's least mature method, and Mexican biodiversity and stormwater credit markets are nascent. At v1, the dollar value here runs mostly through entitlement posture and conservation-capital access, not literal credit revenue.
The ecological baseline and the restoration opportunity set. iAlumbra is the partner that moves this dimension from Directional toward Partial, because the scientific baseline is the evidence.
iAlumbra baseline and restoration modeling, CONANP designation, and emerging biodiversity registries as the credit markets mature.
A 3 is the honest read here, and the honesty is the point. Circularity is a real opportunity on a greenfield build, designed-for-disassembly assemblies, reused and salvaged material, a material passport, but it is the framework's least mature dimension with no settled industry standard, and a remote East Cape site makes reuse sourcing and salvage logistics genuinely harder than they would be in a metro. This dimension should not be oversold to a sophisticated conservation partner. It is a credible secondary commitment, not a headline claim.
Which assemblies to specify for disassembly and which materials to source from reuse, decided alongside the construction methodology.
No industry standard yet. Reference the EU circular economy regulation and material passport practice, and track the standard as it forms.
A walkable, biophilic coastal community with a high green ratio, clean air, daylight, and active design is a strong health setting almost by construction, and the proposal's framing, a place where people begin again, is a health-and-wellness proposition before it is a marketing line. The score is a 4 because the underlying design package is assumed rather than specified, and health value is bookable only once the envelope, indoor-environmental-quality systems, and active-design features are real.
The envelope spec, the indoor-environmental-quality systems, and the active-design and public-realm program that the score is actually measuring.
WELL framework dimensions where measurable, Fitwel, occupant-retention methodology, and a resident survey instrument at stabilization.
This is the most honesty-demanding dimension in the set. The intent and the partners are right: workforce and middle-market housing designed in rather than bolted on, a community map of La Ribera, Cabo Pulmo, and the ranchos that names where development displaces and where it enables, Legacy Works as a regional steward, and a local-economies advisor on the team. But a premium second-home product on the East Cape carries an inherent tension with local wealth retention and affordability, and the framework should not let that tension disappear into a slogan. A 3 reflects strong intent and the right structure against a genuinely hard underlying problem. This is the dimension where measured honesty protects credibility with exactly the audience that will scrutinize it hardest.
The community map: workforce-housing demand, school and clinic capacity, existing fisheries, and a clear-eyed displacement-versus-enablement read.
Local-multiplier analysis, labor and census data, and a post-stabilization tenant and community audit. No software incumbent owns this dimension.
A 3 is honest here. A remote East Cape site means residents and visitors arrive by car or by air, and vehicle miles per resident measured against an urban-infill baseline will look high. Measured against the right baseline, a conventional sprawl resort on the same coast, a compact walkable village where daily needs sit on-site performs well, and that is the comparison the framework should use. The connecting question, how people move between SJD and the site, is being underwritten separately as an access-mode analysis, helicopter, ferry, eVTOL, and that work feeds directly into this dimension.
Internal mode-share and parking ratio from the masterplan, and the SJD-to-site access mode from the companion access-mode underwriting.
FHWA and state-DOT-equivalent methodology adapted to the Mexican context, plus the access-mode analysis.
This is the dimension where the site does the work and the score reaches a 5. A swimmable, east-facing Sea of Cortez shoreline, the Sierra de la Laguna behind it, Cabo Pulmo adjacent, and a masterplan that can be built as a walkable village around ecology with a marina sized to the harbor as a genuine town square. Quality of place is the core of the rent and lease-up premium and the most defensible single claim Los Frailes can make. The score is potential, not yet evidence, only because the design proxies, walkability, daylight, biophilic intensity, public-realm investment, are measured off an assumed masterplan rather than a drawn one.
The masterplan itself. Density follows ecology, the marina is sized to the harbor, and the place proxies become measurable off a real plan rather than an assumed one.
Walkability and design-proxy comps linking place metrics to rent and lease-up, plus a resident survey at stabilization.
The proposal invites assumptions about masterplan, phasing, and timing. Those are listed here so the reader can see exactly what the scores rest on. Where outside research sharpened or qualified a proposal claim, that is named too. The pattern is worth stating plainly: the pressure-testing did not contradict the proposal. It made the case for Phase 1 harder to argue with.
These are assessment assumptions. Phase 1 is precisely the step that replaces them with a factual record, which is why every dimension above sits at Directional confidence.
Los Frailes is exceptionally positioned where the land does the work, and uniformly Directional on evidence because it has not yet run Phase 1. The scorecard is not the case for the project. It is the case for the carrying-capacity study.
Across twelve dimensions the outcome-potential mean is roughly 3.9, with the two 5s, ecosystem services and quality of place, sitting exactly where the site's natural advantages are, and the three 3s, material circularity, community wealth, and mobility, sitting exactly where the genuine tensions and the least mature methods are. That shape is the sign of an honest scorecard rather than a flattering one. But the number that governs the decision is the second axis. Every dimension is Directional today, and four binary gates sit above all of them.
This is what makes the assessment complementary to the proposal rather than redundant with it. The proposal makes the qualitative argument for flipping the order. The scorecard shows, dimension by dimension, the precise mechanism: Phase 1 is the evidence engine. The Sherwood study moves ecosystem services, resource efficiency, resilience, carbon, and community wealth from Directional toward Anchored, and it clears Gates 1 through 3. The formation sprint and Brianna's review clear Gate 4. A sophisticated partner reading this should see that the project is not asking to be believed. It is asking to be measured, and it is naming the instrument.
What changes when iAlumbra is at the table. iAlumbra is not a logo on a partner page. On this scorecard it is the partner that supplies the scientific baseline behind the single highest-potential dimension, ecosystem services, and behind the conservation credibility that Gate 3 depends on. Its involvement is what would move dimension 07 from Directional toward Partial, and it is the bridge to the conservation and philanthropic capital that dimension 03 is counting on. The framework makes that contribution legible: iAlumbra can see precisely which dimensions it touches and what its science is worth in underwriting terms.