May 3, 2023 821 PM
MARFA — El Cosmico announced last week that the reservation waitlist for its selection of 3D-printed houses, planned for the outer edge of the hotel’s upcoming Antelope Hills property, is now open, with homes available for purchase starting at $900,000.
The “Sunday Homes,” designed and constructed in partnership with architecture firm BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group and 3D-printing start-up ICON, are made up of connected circular modules, creating “a unique, cloud-like floorplan from the sum of the combined circles,” per the reservations website. The available homes will consist of three floorplans — two, three and four-bedrooms ranging in size from 1,500 to 2,400 square feet.
A total of 30 to 40 homes will be constructed on the site, said El Cosmico founder Liz Lambert. Though the homes start in price at a baseline of $900,000, Lambert said the full spectrum of prices had not yet been determined.
“We’re still determining what the price range will be, but prices will be based on the number of bedrooms, their location and any upgrades people may want to select,” said Lambert. “As we move forward with the project, we’ll share more information about pricing.”
The homes are just one component of a larger plan to relocate the El Cosmico hotel and campground to a sprawling 61 acres off Antelope Hills Road, tripling the size of the grounds and roughly doubling its guest capacity. The new resort will include around 120 units for hotel guests, a restaurant, an infinity pool and a bathhouse — amenities that would be available for local use. The new site will also serve as the location for El Cosmico’s annual Trans-Pecos Festival of Music + Love.
Since the ambitious project’s announcement in early March, reactions among Antelope Hills property owners has been mixed — while some have expressed enthusiasm or ambivalence, others have expressed apprehension over the development’s potential impacts on their quality of life, with impacts to the water supply, noise and traffic chief among their concerns. A newly-formed neighborhood group plans to bring their concerns to Lambert and maintain a dialogue with the hotelier as the project moves forward.
As for the homes slated to line the property’s outskirts, Lambert has said that the idea is, in part, for those homes to become part of the rental pool, providing alternatives to Airbnbs and relieving some of the demand for short-term rental properties in town. The homes will be managed by El Cosmico.
Still, it is too early to say how many of the homes will become part of the El Cosmico rental pool, and how many may, potentially, be full-time residences, said Lambert.
The question of whether interested buyers plan to use the homes as a primary residence is among those asked of applicants in a brief questionnaire — other questions include whether the applicant has ever been to Marfa, and whether the applicant is a broker or working with a broker.
Lambert clarified that those questions will not be used to make determinations about one’s position on the waitlist, but rather to customize the process of matching applicants to homes.
“Responses to the questionnaire won’t determine who can purchase a Sunday Home,” said Lambert. “They will mostly be used to match the specific characteristics of each home with their future owners.”
El Cosmico and partners plan to break ground on the project in early 2024.
