Some stories are measured in buildings; others are measured in generations. Grupo Colonias is the second kind.
It began in 1984, when a young engineer decided Panama could be a better place to live. Four decades later, his son keeps writing it, raising an entire city. Between the two of them lie more than a thousand homes, a particular way of understanding the craft, and a single conviction: to build is, at its core, to shape how people live.
Ing. Henry Faarup Mauad
A civil engineer from the University of Texas at Austin, with an MBA from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, which he completed in French. But commerce ran in his blood —as a boy he worked in the family's stores— and independence came quickly: in 1984 he founded the company that would define his life, Colonias de Panamá.
His passion for real estate was born of two sources: his craft as an engineer and his travels, from which he returned with ideas to help Panamanians live better. From one of those trips he brought home a new idea for the country: the gated community. He was also a founding partner of Costa del Este.
From 2009 to 2014 he served as Panama's Ambassador to France, to UNESCO and Switzerland. He came home thinking he would retire and play golf. What he found instead was a conversation with his son that would pull him back into the arena. True to his mantra —“you never hang up the gloves”— he is today Secretary of the Panama–David Railway project, having never stopped working side by side with the next generation.
I came back thinking I would retire and play golf. And I found my son, full of energy, and we would talk about new ideas. What better thing for a father than to see his children follow his path.
Henry Faarup Humbert
An economist from the University of Texas at Austin, he came to the family business from venture capital and the school of value investing —Buffett, Munger, Naval—. From it he draws his guiding idea: compound interest, applied not only to capital, but to cities. He calls it “patient urban capital”: the best communities, like the best investments, are built on a horizon of decades, not quarters.
Entrepreneurship runs deep in him: a great-grandson of Federico Humbert Victoria, one of the developers of El Cangrejo, and of Juan B. Arias, founder of Banco General. In 2014 he stepped in as CEO and, together with his father and the Rojas Pardini family, brought Porta Norte to life. A devotee of walkable cities and “Solarpunk” urbanism, he sums up his mission plainly: to create vibrant communities, made for living well.
The handover that changed the scale
For nearly three decades, Colonias de Panamá meant building homes with judgment. Pioneering gated communities —one of them, Fuente del Fresno, recognized by SPIA in 1998— and towers that shaped the skyline of Bella Vista and San Francisco. More than a thousand homes, house by house.
The story turned a corner in 2014. The father was returning from France with retirement in mind; the son was coming back full of energy and new ideas. “After many arguments and exchanges of opinion, he convinced me,” the founder recalls. From that reunion came a generational handover and, with it, a new identity: Colonias de Panamá became Grupo Colonias.
The new name was also a new ambition. The company stopped building project by project to embrace the Master Developer model: no longer building houses within a city, but creating the entire city and its code of living. Father and son set out to find a lot for a single building; they came back with the plans for a 260-hectare city. It is called Ciudad Porta Norte, and its philosophy is clear: from the wall of the gated community to the open, walkable street of New Urbanism.
Four decades, milestone by milestone
The story is still being written
From a 66-home community to a walkable city of 260 hectares. We invite you to discover what we are building today.