• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 05 / 25 / 2011

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May 25, 2011, 7:30 am. By Randal C. Archibold. New York Times News Service. MEXICO CITY — One of Fidel Castro's first acts upon taking power was to get rid of Cuba's golf courses, seeking to stamp out a sport he and other socialist revolutionaries saw as the epitome of bourgeois excess.

Now, 50 years later, foreign developers say the Cuban government has swung in nearly the opposite direction, giving preliminary approval in recent weeks for four large luxury golf resorts on the island, the first in an expected wave of more than a dozen that the government anticipates will lure free-spending tourists to a nation hungry for cash.

The four initial projects total more than $1.5 billion, with the government's cut of the profits about half. Plans for the developments include residences that foreigners will be permitted to buy — a rare opportunity from a government that all but banned private property in its push for social equality.

Castro and his comrade in arms Che Guevara, who worked as a caddie in his youth in Argentina, were photographed in fatigues hitting the links decades ago.

Cuba's deteriorating economy and the rise in the sport's popularity, particularly among big-spending travelers who expect to bring their clubs wherever they go, has softened the government's view, investors said. Cuban officials did not respond to requests for comment, but Manuel Marrero, the tourism minister, told a conference in Europe this month that the government anticipates going forward with joint ventures to build 16 golf resorts in the near future.

For the past three years, Cuba's only 18-hole course, a government-owned spread at the Varadero Beach resort area, has even hosted a tournament. It has long ceased to be, its promoters argued, a rich man's game.

"We were told this foray is the top priority in foreign investment," said Graham Cooke, a Canadian golf course architect designing a $410 million project at Guardalavaca Beach, along the island's north coast about 500 miles from Havana, for a consortium of Indians from Canada. The company, Standing Feather International, says it signed a memorandum of agreement with the Cuban government in late April and will be the first to break ground, in September.

Source: http://postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1455718