The catch is that the entire area is in decline and there's little to do for social activities or employment.
Declining cities in the US have tried this, and they are not places people generally want to live. This is the same scenario, just in a location that is romanticized by most of the western world instead of Baltimore, MD.
Only sensible solution would be if you were starting a factory and then building company town on something existing... But even then you probably want something slightly bigger already as scaling to big enough is huge investment.
You'd think a well placed billionaire (or even a "mere" 10s-100s millionaire) could do something interesting there. Buy up 10-20 vacant houses, renovate them, finance a couple of "fun" local entertainment businesses (idk craft breweries or barcades or minigolf or climbing gyms or escape rooms or whatever would be enough of a draw), fund a local arts/music program, and start a small tech/finance/consulting business in town. How much cash investment does it realistically take to make land appreciate even just enough to make it worth it?
And I'm not talking Baltimore, which has a population of 600k and just a lot more baked in problems, I'm talking declining European "villages".
> finance a couple of "fun" local entertainment businesses (idk craft breweries or barcades or minigolf or climbing gyms or escape rooms or whatever would be enough of a draw), fund a local arts/music program, and start a small tech/finance/consulting business in town
People who do this kind of stuff without much personal involvement get surrounded by consultants who do lowest common denominator nonsense with everyone taking their 30% extra on top of costs (because the person paying isn't paying attention!), and you end up with a bunch of stupid gastropubs that aren't profitable, and your IT company doesn't have any local talent.
Almost every restaurant and business that people actually like survives by having some owner put a bunch of energy into it. I don't think there are that many people who would be willing do that... and if you pay people to do it for you the economics really stop working extremely quickly.
At one point the billionaire will be tired of dropping $5 million a year for their pubs that nobody actually cares about
I dunno, just seems like a more interesting, fun project.
I dunno, I'm sure it's confirmation/reporting bias, but it feels like all of the very wealthy aren't interested in projects that don't give them some huge amount of control or dominance. Like, middle class people will invest and collaborate in public parks, small businesses, a boat, a shared vacation rental. Musicians and athletes are often invested in giving back and revitalizing their home town, or they'll start lifestyle brands or support or invest in upcoming talent or community space. Sure you have plenty of philanthropy and foundations, but I feel like you never see self-interested personal projects that are interesting or fun these days. It's all boring rule-the-world garbage. The whole tech-city in Sonoma county is a good example, why not take over a town in the Valley or in the Sierras and put in fiber and a subsidized grocery store and try to create a small proof of concept first? But no, it always has to be the biggest shiniest bullshit.
Declining cities in the US have tried this, and they are not places people generally want to live. This is the same scenario, just in a location that is romanticized by most of the western world instead of Baltimore, MD.