Australia’s Trump Tower plans scrapped as developer says brand has become ‘toxic’
Skyscrapers on the Gold Coast of Queensland
(CNN) — Plans to build Australia’s first Trump Tower have been scrapped just three months after it was 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.
The luxury seaside property was the Trump Organization’s “first official project in Australia,” Eric Trump said at the time.
CNN has reached out to the Trump Organization for comment.
One petition aiming to stop the project garnered more than 140,000 signatures.
CK, who started the petition under an alias to avoid backlash from Trump supporters, told CNN in February she felt powerless while watching scenes of “anti-immigrant violence and the social division” in the US on social media, and looked for a way to express her opposition.
Young said the tower will still proceed — but without the Trump name.
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.”
“Trump Org is a non-political, free of the President run organization by Eric and Don Jr and run well with over 136 resorts and towers globally yet here in Australia both the media and certain orgs paint a picture of Donald Trump for pure sensationalism,” Young said.
He said there is “no acrimony between the Trump family and myself” and he has been in discussions with “many high-end luxury plans” about the tower.
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 “Australia’s finest tourist property at Surfers Paradise.”
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 in Mar-a-Lago and was an enthusiastic supporter of the project — said a development application had never been submitted to 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.”
Money could also have been a factor, according to Tate.
“The Trump Organization wants a lot more for their brand on the funding side of things, to operate it and the percentage of return,” Tate told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“(Meanwhile) the developer’s going, ‘Well, I’m putting in all of my money in and you’re actually going to take quite a lot of profit’, so I think that’s why they’re parting ways.”
The-CNN-Wire
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CNN’s Hilary Whiteman contributed reporting.
