Anger over luxury resort of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner on Albanian nature island: ‘Albania is not for sale’

Ivanka Trump found the island herself. She took a boat trip across the Adriatic Sea a few years ago with her husband Jared Kushner. They anchored for a swim and found it: an incredibly beautiful “private island.” They entered the coast barefoot, took a walk and went all the way to the highest point. They were surprised at the lack of buildings.

The experience of that untouched nature never left them, and in recent years they have “created the opportunity” to develop and transform the island. But, with a lot of care and restraint, because it is so beautiful, says the daughter of American President Donald Trump in an interview with podcast maker David Senra.

There have been protests in Albania all week. A few hundred people demonstrated last weekend at the shielding of the construction site on the island, called Sazan. Private security guards used heavy force against the demonstrators, according to videos on social media, further fueling the fire. Ivanka Trump’s “private island” is a nature reserve, home to protected birds, including flamingos, as well as seals and turtles.

The flamingo in particular has become an example of the protests: In Albanian media the slogan “we are the flamingos” is going around, there is talk of the “flamingo revolution“, and in Tirana opponents take to the streets with cardboard flamingos.

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There have been protests in the Albanian capital Tirana all week against the construction of a luxury resort on the island of Sazan, where flamingos live, among other things.

Photo Hameraldi Agolli/AP, photo Florion Goga/REUTERS

Protesters who take to the streets in the capital Tirana night after night are concerned about an irreversible decline of the nature reserve, but also angry about the lack of transparency. “Albania is not for sale,” sounds on the street. They want to know how the negotiations between the government and the Trump/Kushner family went. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the American president, heads private equity company Affinity Partners, which will develop the luxury resort with hotels, villas and bunkers.

Exception for tourist projects

The Albanian Anti-Corruption Authority (SPAK) confirmed to Albanian media on Monday that it has launched an investigation into a change in the law that allows the construction of the resort. The nature reserve where the Trump family wants to build was still protected until 2024, but a new law allows an exception to be made for tourist projects. The PPNEA, the Association for the Conservation and Protection of Nature in Albania, questions what scientific or ecological evidence has been put forward to justify such an exception. The protection of the area was further tightened in 2017.

Prime Minister Edi Rama defends the holiday resort. As long as I am here, he said in a press conference on Monday, there is no chance that the project will be stopped. Albania is one of the poorer countries in Europe, and Rama wants to join the “Champions League” of the holiday world. The Prime Minister believes that his country should not “be afraid” of such a large investment by the company behind the resort, totaling four billion euros.

The protests remind conservationist Taulant Bino, of the Albanian Ornithological Society, of his youth in the early 1990s, when they demonstrated for freedom and an end to communism. He thinks about that because that was the moment that protest in Albania changed the system, he says Studio24 on Albanian TV. And now he sees that the concerns that the environmental movement has had for years about the Kushner/Trump project are being more widely supported.

It takes a lot of vision

A final design has not yet been made public. Jared Kushner shared two years ago by AI-generated ‘early designs’, including a sand-colored terraced structure incorporated into the coastal rocks, and a composition of white shapes protruding from the mountain, containing hotel beds.

The architecture, Ivanka Trump says in the podcast, must be completely “integrated into the landscape”, it must almost emerge from it. She sees it as a convergence of her experience real estateher travels, “a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how people want to live.” This will be a manifestation of that, and it will take a lot of vision, she says. It will require a collaboration of a selection of “greatest masters” out there.

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