Abandonment of Luxury Hotel Plans Raises Questions in Belgrade
Plans for a luxury hotel on the site of the former Yugoslav army headquarters in Belgrade are dead. Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić made the announcement on Tuesday, confirming that Jared Kushner’s investment firm — long associated with his father-in-law, former U.S. President Donald Trump — had walked away from the project. The proposal had included a Trump Tower bearing the family name, and it had been controversial from the start.
In a statement to the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Kushner’s investment company, Affinity Partners, confirmed it was pulling out. The firm said major developments should bring people together rather than divide them, framing the withdrawal as a gesture of respect toward the Serbian people and the city of Belgrade.
Vučić did not hide his frustration. “Now we are left with a useless building, and it’s only a matter of time until bricks and other materials start falling off it, because no one is going to touch it anymore,” he said.
The proposed hotel had touched a raw nerve for many Serbs. The building is a remnant of NATO airstrikes during the Yugoslav wars of 1999, and for a large part of the population it stands as a symbol of resistance to what they see as Western aggression. The idea of replacing it with an American luxury hotel carried a weight that went well beyond architecture or tourism.
The project’s collapse came alongside a separate but related scandal. Nikola Selaković, Serbia’s Minister of Culture in Vučić’s administration, faces charges for allegedly falsifying documents to have the building removed from Belgrade’s list of protected structures.
The site’s future is now anyone’s guess, and the questions left behind — about memory, politics, and what Belgrade does with its most loaded ruins — are not going away any time soon.
