'Appetite for demolishing heritage;’ Jared Kushner slammed for Trump hotel plan

Leaders of a European cultural heritage organization are hitting back against the real estate aspirations of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his aspirations to demolish a historic site in Serbia to make way for a Trump-branded hotel.

“(The structures) shouldn’t be removed just because a private investor showed up with a huge appetite for demolishing heritage in order to build an inappropriate hotel and apartment complex,” said Sneska Quaedvlieg-Mihailovic, who heads the Europa Nostra Foundation, a Brussels-based European cultural heritage organization, Bloomberg reported.

Kushner has long planned to raise to the ground two historic buildings in the nation’s capital, buildings that were heavily damaged in the U.S.-led 1999 NATO bombing on Yugoslavia, to make way for a 30-story, 250,000 square-foot luxury Trump hotel, valued at $500 million. Locals, however, have pushed back against Kushner’s plans, having fiercely protested efforts to destroy the buildings that in 2005 received protected heritage status.

And now, Europa Nostra Foundation and its leaders are pushing back further, demanding any plans to demolition the historic sites be halted immediately.

“Demolition is not an option,” Quaedvlieg-Mihailovic said. “The only option is renewal.”

The two buildings had their protected heritage status removed in 2024, making way for Kushner’s real estate aspirations. However, a former state heritage preservation official was arrested back in May after being accused of falsifying signatures to permit the buildings to be destroyed.

Despite the accusations of foul play, Serbian President Aleksander Vicic told Bloomberg shortly after the official’s arrest that Kusher’s project was still moving forward

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