Plans to build Australia’s first Trump Tower have been scrapped just three months after being announced, with the local developer saying the Trump brand has become “toxic.”
“Let’s just say that with the Iran war and everything else, the Trump brand was increasingly unpopular in Australia,” David Young, CEO of Altus Property Group, told CNN in a statement.
The 91-story Trump International Hotel & Tower Gold Coast was billed as Australia’s tallest tower, featuring a 285-room luxury hotel, high-end retail plaza, restaurants and residential apartments finished to Trump specifications, according to a February press release from Altus announcing the deal.
The project sparked backlash after it was announced by Altus and the Trump Organization, which is owned by US President Donald Trump but run by his sons Donald Jr. and Eric.
One petition aiming to stop the project garnered more than 140,000 signatures, with the organizer telling CNN in February that she was looking for a way to express her opposition to “anti-immigrant violence” and “social division” in the US.
In a LinkedIn post Tuesday, the Altus CEO called the backlash to the Trump Tower “grossly unfair” but said “the brand in this country has become toxic to Australians.”
He said there is “no acrimony between the Trump family and myself” and he has been in discussions with “many high-end luxury brands” about the tower.
The Trump Organization blamed the developer for the project’s demise.
“After months of negotiations and empty promise, after empty promise, on a supposed $1.5 billion project, Altus Property Group was unable to meet the most basic financial obligation due upon the execution of the agreement,” Kimberly Benza, director of executive operations and communications for the Trump Organization, said in a statement.
“Mr. Young’s attempt to blame certain world events for our termination of the agreement is merely a ploy to distract from his own defaults and failures.”
A cold call to Ivanka Trump
Young had laid the groundwork for the tower in 2007 with a “cold call to Ivanka Trump,” according to a blog post on the Altus website.
Young recalled introducing himself to Trump’s daughter as a property developer from Australia, who was intent on building the nation’s “finest tourist property.”
Skyscrapers on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia. todaydesign/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Almost 20 years later, when the deal was signed, Young said the tower “will be an Australian, not American project,” according to comments published in The Australian newspaper.
He had anticipated the building could be ready before the Brisbane Olympics in 2032.
But Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate – who once dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago and was an enthusiastic supporter of the project – said a development application had never been submitted to the city council.
“This project was an agreement between two private parties,” Tate said in a statement to CNN, adding “we didn’t have a proposal to consider.”