In an interview with Bloomberg yesterday, Huang Nubo, the Chinese poet and entrepreneur, said he has secured a deal to lease the farm Grímsstaðir á Fjöllum on the highland plateau in northeast Iceland. The land covers 300 square kilometers.
Grímstaðir á Fjöllum. Photo by Páll Stefánsson.
A formal investment agreement would be signed “no later than October,” Huang, founder of Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group Co., said in the interview in Beijing yesterday.
The leasing price would be about USD 1 million (ISK 129 million, EUR 812,000) lower than the purchase price and be “a bit less” than USD 7.8 million (ISK 1 billion, EUR 6.3 million), Huang said, without elaborating.
Last year, the Icelandic government rejected Beijing Zhongkun Investment’s bid to buy Grímstaðir á Fjöllum, saying it would be “incompatible” with the law amid opposition to foreign ownership of property.
The company plans to build a hotel, about 100 villas, and a golf course on the 10 square kilometers of the “buildable” section that he expects to lease for 40 years with a right to extend the contract by another 40 years, Huang said. The remaining 300 square kilometers of land will be developed into a park that provides services like hiking, horseback riding, and hang gliding to tourists, Bloomberg reported.
“The lease agreement is also acceptable and the final outcome is not bad,” Huang told Bloomberg. “Our total investment will probably be less than USD 200 million (ISK 25.7 billion, EUR 162 million), but it’s not a small deal there.”
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