LONDON: UK property developer, plans to invest more than $500m to develop a luxury Cuban tourist resort in one of the first signs of big money interest in the island since Havana began talks to normalise relations with the US in December.
The resort will allow foreigners to own beachfront property on the socialist island for the first time. It will also boast an 18-hole golf course – once considered by Fidel Castro a bourgeois sport – in a further sign the island is allowing once-unthinkable liberal reforms of its Soviet-style economy.
“We’ve long liked Cuba, and signed this deal before the US talks began,” Ian Livingstone, London & Regional co-executive chairman, told the Financial Times. “I think the Cubans see it as something of a pathfinder project.” He said the total build-out value would be “well north of $500m”.
London & Regional, privately owned by Mr Livingstone and his brother Ian, has a £9bn property portfolio, two thirds in the UK, the rest in emerging markets. Group accounts at Companies House reported net assets of £1bn in 2013 and operating profits of £213m.
One of its largest projects is a 6m sq. ft redevelopment of Panama’s old US Air Force base into a mixed-use business, residential and recreational centre, also with a golf course.
The 1.5m square foot Cuban project, called Carbonera, lies 100km north of Havana, near the Varadero beach resort. Palmares SA, a state company charged with developing Cuban golf, is the joint venture’s 51 per cent partner and contributed the land, free of property claims by nationalised owners. France’s Bouygues and Brazil’s Odebrecht, already operating in Cuba, may tender for construction.
