Demolishing the iconic Hotel "Yugoslavia", which until 2011 was under state protection as a cultural monument, started on Friday.
In March of this year, the company "Millennium Team" became the owner of the hotel, and the construction of a new residential complex with a business tower and a hotel from the luxury chain "Ritz-Carlton" is planned in its place. The hotel was sold to the sole participant in the auction, the company "MV Investment", which owns it "Millennium Team", at an initial price of slightly more than 27 million euros.
Immediately after becoming the owner of the hotel, the "Millennium Team" announced that it had initiated an amendment to the Detailed Regulation Plan in order to be able to build a modern residential and business complex with a high-class hotel, stating that it plans to invest 400 million euros in the next four years.
The portal KRIK previously wrote about the connections of the "Millennium Team" with the authorities, namely the Serbian Progressive Party. It was stated that the brother of Finance Minister Sinisa Malog, Predrag Mali, used a car and an apartment directly given to him by the company "Millennium Team". The co-owner of the "Millennium Team" Ivan Bošnjak was seen with the President of Serbia at the send-off of the son of the owner of the "Informer" tabloid Dragan J. Vučićević to the army.
Futile oppositions
Groups of citizens and certain parties such as the Green-Left Front and the Freedom and Justice Party opposed the announcements of the demolition of "Yugoslavia", but this was not enough to interest a sufficient number of citizens who prevented the demolition. Previously, the hotel tried to break the NATO pact in May 1999, when the hotel was bombed, but failed in this attempt.
Hotel "Yugoslavia" was built according to the project of the architect Lavoslav Horvat, it received its first guests in 1969. The guests of "Yugoslavia" were, among others, the British Queen Elizabeth, American astronauts who landed on the moon - Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, American presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and musicians Tina and Ike Turner.
A symbol of the new social ideas of socialist Yugoslavia
When it was built, it was the largest and most modern hotel in the former Yugoslavia, with seven floors and accompanying buildings, 1500 rooms, 1100 beds in 200 single, 400 double rooms and 23 suites, a restaurant with 600 seats and a smaller restaurant with 200 seats and all related facilities. .
It was first closed to visitors in 2006, but reopened at the end of 2013 when 104 rooms on the Danube side on the third, fourth and sixth floors were completed and was then in the category of a three-star hotel.
Together with the building of the Palace of Serbia (formerly the Palace of the Federation or SIV) built in 1959 and the building of the business center Ušće (formerly the Central Committee or CK) built in 1964, Hotel "Yugoslavia" formed an architectural unit that was supposed to show the direction of new social ideas and currents of socialist Yugoslavia, but also to highlight the development of New Belgrade as a new whole in contrast to the old city core.
Citizens' fears
The day before the demolition began, on Thursday, on the plateau near the "Yugoslavia" hotel, a group of "Beogradvoda" workers cut down the trees that were planted there several dozen years ago.
Citizens from the surrounding buildings fear that a "base" will be made at that place for the rafts that will be placed there, and because of which the residents in the vicinity will not have peace in the future.
