iceland Huang Nubo: The Lease He Could Do

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And while Huang Nubo may be prohibited from buying property in Iceland, there’s apparently nothing to prevent him from leasing some.

Iceland’s government has agreed to lease property in the Grímsstadir á Fjöllum region to Huang, opening the door for construction of the “eco-tourism” resort that the Beijing-based developer has been itching for build for nearly a year. Huang recently told China National Radio that he plans to sign a 99-year lease and to build a hotel, a horse race track, several parks, and a golf course.

“Our negotiation is going on smoothly,” a spokesman for Huang’s Zhongkun Investment Group, Ltd. said earlier this year.

Huang originally planned to buy 74,130 acres, an expanse so large that many Icelanders feared he couldn’t possibly be up to anything good. The site he aims to lease will be smaller, but its size appears to be a matter of speculation. China Daily says it’s 750 acres, while other Chinese sources say 52,000.

The resort in northeastern Iceland is one of two golf ventures currently on Zhongkun’s plate. As I’ve previously noted, the company controls 14,825 acres west of Pu’er, in China’s Yunnan Province, where it aims to build a large resort community with multiple golf courses.

And lest I forget, Zhongkun is also thinking about building resort communities like the one in Iceland in two other Scandinavian nations, Finland and Denmark.

Huang has his eyes, at least in part, on Chinese vacationers, 80 million of whom are expected to travel abroad this year. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Iceland reportedly grew by 70 percent between 2010 and 2011, and a golf resort that specifically caters to their needs and desires could bring Iceland an even larger piece of the action.

The original version of the preceding post appeared in the June 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.