Trump’s Australian Hotel Tower Scrapped by Developer

It looks like the Trump Organization won’t be going Down Under after all.

Altus Property Group has put the kibosh on its plans for a proposed 91-story Trump International Hotel & Tower Gold Coast just three months after announcing the plans alongside the Trump Organization, CNN reported. The tower had been pitched as Australia’s tallest building, with a 285-room luxury hotel, branded residences, retail and restaurants aimed at cashing in on the Gold Coast’s luxury boom ahead of the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane.

Instead, the project became a political lightning rod. Altus CEO David Young said the Trump name had become “toxic” in Australia amid backlash tied to President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and foreign policy. “Let’s just say that with the Iran war and everything else, the Trump brand was increasingly unpopular in Australia,” Young told CNN.

“The brand in this country has become toxic to Australians,” Young wrote in a LinkedIn post, going on to say that there was “no acrimony” with the Trump family and that the decision was “pure business.” Young said he is now shopping the tower concept to other luxury hotel brands.

The Trump Organization painted a far different picture of the deal’s collapse, blaming Altus 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. “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.”

The development was nearly two decades in the making. The effort dates back to a cold call to Ivanka Trump in 2007 where Young introduced himself as a developer from Australia and pitched what he envisioned as Australia’s premier tourism development.

The project appears to have been less advanced than its splashy unveiling suggested. Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate, an ardent supporter of the project who previously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, told CNN that no formal development application had ever been submitted to the city. “This project was an agreement between two private parties,” Tate told CNN. “We didn’t have a proposal to consider.”

At the same time, other Trump-branded projects in the Middle East, namely in Saudi Arabia, are moving forward.

— Chris Malone Méndez