Plans to build Australia’s first Trump Tower have been scrapped just three months after it was announced, with a local developer saying the Trump brand had become “toxic”.
“Let’s just say that the Trump brand has become increasingly unpopular in Australia because of the Iran war and everything else,” Altus Property Group CEO David Young told CNN in a statement.
According to Altus’ February press release announcing the deal, the 91-storey Trump International Hotel & Tower Gold Coast was touted as Australia’s tallest tower, with a 285-room luxury hotel, luxury retail plaza, restaurants and Trump-style residential apartments.
The project sparked backlash after it was announced by Altus and the Trump Organization, which is owned by U.S. President Donald Trump and run by his sons Donald Jr. and Eric.
Eric Trump said at the time that the luxury waterfront property was the Trump Organization’s “first official Australian project.”
CNN has reached out to the Trump Organization for comment.
A petition seeking to cancel the project has gathered more than 140,000 signatures.
CK, who started the petition under a pseudonym to avoid backlash from Trump supporters, told CNN in February that he felt helpless after seeing scenes of “anti-immigrant violence and social division” in the United States on social media and was looking for a way to express his opposition.
Young said construction of the tower will continue, but he would not mention Trump by name.
Altus’ CEO said in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday that the backlash against Trump Tower was “grossly unfair” but that “our country’s brand has become toxic to Australians.”
“Trump.org is a non-political, presidentially independent organization run by Eric and Don Jr. that operates over 136 resorts and towers around the world, but here in Australia the media and some organizations have painted an image of Donald Trump for purely sensational purposes,” Mr Young said.
“There is no conflict between the Trump family and me,” he said, adding that he is in talks with “a number of high-end plans” for the tower.
Young laid the groundwork for the tower in 2007 by “wooing Ivanka Trump,” according to a blog post on Altus’ website.
Young recalled how he introduced himself to Trump’s daughter as an Australian property developer who said she was going to build “Australia’s best tourist destination in Surfers Paradise.”
Some 20 years later, when the deal was signed, Mr Young said the tower would be “an Australian project, not an American project”, according to comments published in The Australian.
He expected the building to be completed in time for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
But Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate, who once dined with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago and is 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 that “there were no proposals to consider.”
Money may also have been a factor, Tate said.
“The Trump Organization is demanding more from their brand financially, operationally and in terms of profitability,” Tate told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“[On the other hand]developers are saying, ‘I’m putting all my money in, so I’m actually going to make a pretty good profit,’ so I think that’s why they part ways.”
