by Jorge del Castillo
Chapala Haciendas consists of 3 different subdivisions: 1, 2 & 3, commonly referred to as “Fraccs”. They are located about 28.5 kilometers from Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla International Airport (Guadalajara Airport, GDL). Normally it takes from 30 minutes to 45 minutes to drive in an auto from the “Fracc” to the airport. It is 49.5 kilometers from the Zona Centro of Guadalajara where the municipal and State of Jalisco business offices are located. It takes about 60 minutes to drive to the center. There are local government branch offices in Chapala. The Teatro Degollado, Catedral de Guadalajara, and many museums are in the old historical center. The better-known communities are Zapopan, Tlajomulco, Tonalá, and Tlaquepaque which are suburbs of Guadalajara as well as many others.
Chapala Haciendas is a part of the municipality of Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico. There are 576 inhabitants as of 2020. Among all the towns in the municipality, this total population is number 9 in terms of number of inhabitants. Chapala Haciendas is at an altitude of 1,611 meters, about 5,285 feet above sea level. The town of Chapala includes Palacio Municipal de Chapala, Delegación Ajijic, Delegación Atotonilquillo, Delegación San Antonio Tlayacapan, Delegación Santa Cruz de la Soledad, and the Delegación San Nicolás de Ibarra. For more demographic information you can go to PueblosAmerica.com at https://mexico.pueblosamerica.com/i/chapala-haciendas.
Here is a part of the bylaws from 1995. “In Chapala, Jalisco on June 12, 1995, the Association and Organization Contract of the same, which is granted by the following: Charles Paul Michaloski, Beatriz Hernandez de Kelly, Mercedes Zavala de Uptegrove, Alejandra Reyes Viuda de Shannon, Jean Dunston Taylor de Strange and Jorge Valencia Macias, (under the terms of the association By-laws)… The appearing parties constitute a non-profit Civil Association, subject to Mexican laws, which will be called “COLONOS DEL FRACCIONAMIENTO CHAPALA HACIENDAS”. There is a current Board of Directors who serve at the will of the property owners. You can contact the property management and the Board through the Business Office located at Cardenal 8, Chapala Haciendas, Jalisco.
George “aka” Jorge del Castillo, a current resident of Chapala Hacienda 2, received the following history of the development “fraccionamiento” of Chapala Haciendas on April 15, 2023, via WhatsApp from Sergio Magaña, the son of one of the original developers through Joe Murillo owner of Mi Casa Realty, Chapala.
My father Leopoldo Magaña Ochoa (born in Quitupan, Jalisco 1905), graduated in Law. He received his degree by unanimous vote, at the National University of Mexico (La Universidad Nacional de Mexico, UNAM) in the year 1938, to practice business in real estate. In that same year, he promoted several developments or neighborhoods in the cities of Guadalajara, Zapopan, and San Andres, Jalisco.
In the year 1959, he began his stage as a pioneer, in the city of Chapala, Jalisco. He started with his sons Leopoldo Magaña Velazquz, a civil engineer who had graduated from the Autonomous University of Guadalajara (Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara), and Sergio Ernesto Magaña Velazquez, a student of the Technological University of Monterrey, Nuevo Leon (Tecnologico de Monterrey), in the career of business administration.
Leopoldo Magaña started as a pioneer in Chapala, with a property (ranchito) of 10 hectares. He eventually grew his development up to 100 hectares, about 247 acres with the three sections of that facility. In those years, the law of facilities in the State of Jalisco was established, which obliged the developers to provide services to the new developments. These requirements were the construction of paved streets and sidewalks, electrification and lighting, water supply (deep well), and drinking water pipelines for all the streets that covered these developments (fraccionamientos).
The first house was built in 1960, by a citizen of the United States of America, a retired United Airlines pilot, Karl F. Lueder, and his wife. The house was built on 4 plots of the development with a certain Japanese style of architecture, as they had been living for a long time in Japan.
Upon the death of Leopoldo Magaña Ochoa in 1976, his children continued the construction of these developments and others in the town of Ixtlahucán de los Membrillos, Jalisco, including the development and construction of three beautiful and large garden horizontal condominiums with their respective recreational areas and immense, beautiful gardens. One of them was the first horizontal condominium that was built on the shore of Lake Chapala, in either Jalisco or Michoacan.
Anecdotally, when the condominium process was carried out in the public property registry of Chapala, (the Magañas were pioneers in this type of property development), the director of the public property registry of Guadalajara had to be brought onto the staff of the public registry of Chapala for fifteen days to update them and teach them how to proceed legally for this new condominium law.
The first sales promotions were carried out in the United States of America, in the State of California. They had an office in San Carlos, California, a city near San Francisco. In order to sell and obtain the necessary licenses in the State of California, an official of the California government had to come to Chapala for several weeks or months, with expenses paid. He was called a commissioner. He was there to make sure that the promotions they were doing in California were real and true, the question of titles and deeds were available, and that the advertising that was carried out was according to reality.
Four generations of the Magaña family have been involved in the entire process of these developments: Magaña Ochoa, Magaña Velazquez, Magaña Sierra, and Magaña Chidan families.
Approximately 1,000,000 (one million) square meters, the original 100 hecatares or 247 acres have been developed, fully urbanized. Approximately 720 individual plots of land, and as in all large projects, small involuntary errors have been made, which in all cases have been corrected one way or another.
Approximately one thousand trees were planted, including jacarandas, tabachines, eucalyptus, and fruit trees. It is one of the most wooded landscapes in the towns of Chapala, Ajijic, San Juan Cosalá, and Jocotepec.
The first section was designed, drawn, and constructed by a civil engineer Tapatio Francisco Orozco and the second and third section was designed by an American engineer Perry Wilson, who had great ideas and a lot of knowledge of topography and the design of streets and lots which were planned according to the natural topography of the land itself and were built almost entirely by the engineer Leopoldo Magaña Velazquez.
The Magaña family have always had the support of all authorities, federal, state, and municipal, and the heads of their municipal presidents (mayors).
Currently, the lands that remain available for sale or construction, are held by various heirs of the four generations of Magaña families or other private parties.
Rights to publish the Magaña family story have been released by Sergio Magaña.