beach
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc sh ...
tourist
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business; also the theory and practice of touring (disambiguation), touring, the business of attracting, accommodating, and entertaining tourists, and the business of operating tour (disambiguation), tours. Th ...
complex in the Punta Cucharas sector of
Barrio Canas
Canas is one of the 31 barrios in the municipality of Ponce, Puerto Rico. Along with Anón, Coto Laurel, Guaraguao, Quebrada Limón, Real, San Patricio, and Marueño, and the coastal barrio of Capitanejo, Canas is one of the municipality's ni ...
in
Ponce, Puerto Rico
Ponce (, , , ) is both a city and a municipality on the southern coast of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.
Ponce, Puerto Rico's most populated city outside the San Juan metropolitan area, was founded on 12 August 1 ...
. It was designed in the early 1960s by Luis Flores, an architect from
Cayey, Puerto Rico
Cayey (), officially Cayey de Muesas, is a mountain town and municipality in central Puerto Rico located on the Sierra de Cayey within the Central Mountain range, north of Salinas and Guayama; south of Cidra and Caguas; east of Aibonito and ...
. It is located on
PR-2
Puerto Rico Highway 2 (PR-2) is a road in Puerto Rico that connects the cities of San Juan and Ponce. At 156 miles (230 km) long, it is Puerto Rico's longest singled-signed highway.
The road runs counter-clockwise from San Juan to Ponce. ...
, Km 220.1, in the El Tuque sector of Barrio
Canas Canas or Cañas may refer to:
Places
* Canas (Lycia), a town of ancient Lycia, now in Turkey
* Amatlán de Cañas, a municipality in Nayarit, Mexico
* Cañas Canton, in Guanacaste province, Costa Rica
* Cañas, Costa Rica, capital of the Cañas (ca ...
in Ponce. The sector of El Tuque is considered Puerto Rico's largest populated sector. The beach opened on 17 July 1965.
History
The name ''El Tuque'' comes from the name of a farm of measuring 267.11
cuerda
The term "cuerda" (Spanish for ''rope'') refers to a unit of measurement in some Spanish-speaking regions, including Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Cuba, Spain, and Paraguay. In Puerto Rico, the term cuerda (and "Spanish acre"government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in the mid-1960s, as part of the central government's attempt to provide a network of such recreational facilities throughout the island. It included gazebos and fire pits near the beach, a restaurant, changing rooms with showers and lockers, a children's pool, and two adult Olympic-size swimming pools with snack bars. It was inaugurated on 17 July 1965.
Due to beach erosion that occurred over the years, a
beach replenishment
Beach nourishment (also referred to as beach renourishment, beach replenishment, or sand replenishment) describes a process by which sediment, usually sand, lost through longshore drift or erosion is replaced from other sources. A wider beach can ...
project then took place in 1979, but the sand added was darker than the original sand there and locals now consider the beach "dirty".
By the early-1980s, however, the area had fallen into disrepair, starting with the swimming pools and parking areas, for lack of proper maintenance by the Commonwealth Government. As a result, the beach opened only sporadically. Eventually the complex was permanently shut down in the late 1980s. The Municipality of Ponce, then obtained ownership of the property from the Commonwealth government via a transfer. About a decade later, in 1996, the
United States Army Corps of Engineers
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, anniversaries = 16 June (Organization Day)
, battles =
, battles_label = Wars
, website =
, commander1 = ...
picked up the El Tuque project again for purposes of re-furbishing the beach with new sand.
El Tuque Recreational Complex
In May 2002, a group of private investors became interested in the area and entered into a contract with the Puerto Rico central government to develop the area into a family and tourist recreational center. The investors spent $16 million to develop the area into the El Tuque Beach Entertainment Center. El Tuque Recreational Complex opened in the summer of 2002 and included an aquatic complex / splash water park with three pools with waves, high speed water slides, and water sports. Some of activities of the park were hiking, swimming, boating, fishing, whitewater paddling, snorkeling, and scuba diving. The aquatic park closed in 2007, the same year that an accident at the water park injured a park patron leaving him quadriplegic. The complex had a pub and a
Quality Inn
Choice Hotels brands
Quality Inn is an American multinational chain of hotels based in Rockville, Maryland. It is a part of Choice Hotels International family of brands which has operations in more than 40 countries. Quality Inn is the foundi ...
hotel located on the beach, within the recreational complex facilities. A nearby
Holiday Inn
Holiday Inn is an American chain of hotels based in Atlanta, Georgia. and a brand of IHG Hotels & Resorts. The chain was founded in 1952 by Kemmons Wilson, who opened the first location in Memphis, Tennessee that year. The chain was a division ...
hotel that had opened a few years earlier, provides additional lodging facilities for beach-goers.
A second addition to the project, which opened in 2003, includes a new
speedway
Speedway may refer to:
Racing Race tracks
*Edmonton International Speedway, also known as Speedway Park, a former motor raceway in Edmonton, Alberta
*Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a motor raceway in Speedway, Indiana
Types of races and race cours ...
called the '' Ponce International Speedway Park''. It includes a drag-racing track and circuit track. The speedway drag-racing sections has both 1/4-mile and 1/8th-mile sections, and the full circuit is 1.52 miles long and incorporates 12 turns. A small marina has also been added. Boating and kayaking is promoted as part of the center's eco-tourism activities.
Solace by the Sea
In 2017, following Hurricane María, Grupo Misla Villalba, a group of local investors, remodeled the former Quality Inn Hotel, which had closed 2 years before, and opened a new hotel, named "Solace by the Sea" on 30 November 2017.''Inauguran hotel en Ponce.'' Telemundo Puerto Rico, 1 December 2017. Retrieved 29 December 2018.