REPUBLISHED

“The state as estate agent”: the auctions of 2025, from Sazan to Zyber Hallulli

Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 30 December 2025

2025 was an ambitious year for the government and the enterprise managing public properties. The Albanian Investment Corporation (AIC) has turned the country into an auction house for private partners, at least “in 3D renderings”.

From Sazan Island to towers, new stadiums and sweeping urban transformations, 2025 alone accounts for 31 projects in Tirana (16), Durrës (6), Vlorë (4), Elbasan (1), Korçë (2) and elsewhere.

Despite the series of competitions involving architecture studios and promises of development, debate over the Corporation’s work was dominated by concerns about transparency, decision-making, limited competition and the unclear relationship between public and private benefits.

The first concerns: closing off Sazan Island

The year began with the news that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had been granted strategic investor status to transform part of Sazan Island into a luxury resort.

Kushner had developed the idea during a family visit in the summer of 2023. He made the concept public in spring 2024, at a time when the Albanian public had no information about it.

At the end of June 2025, the government established “Albanian State Development & Real Estate”, which, under AIC’s management, would represent the state in a partnership with Kushner’s Affinity Partners.

After this development, no further information followed.

In parallel, AIC presented a series of projects aimed at “reshaping the urban landscape” whose common feature was handing public spaces to private developers for high-rise construction under the so-called “Bridges towards Albania 2030”.

Without broad public discussion of the mechanism being used, the government and AIC continued awarding further projects. The next was a project handing government residences in Velipojë and Vlorë to a private company to turn them into hotels.

During this period, Citizens.al showed how calls were launched “without competition or accountability”, while competitive procedures were inadequate or opaque.

Stadiums and the failure over the National Library

In early spring, OMA’s project was declared the winner for the new Selman Stërmasi stadium. It included two towers and new buildings in the area, news that sparked debate about using public spaces for more than just the sports venue.

The same approach was intended to be replicated with the stadiums in Durrës (51N4E), Vlorë (XDGA) and Korçë (CEBRA). Citizens.al reported that the architectural competitions under these calls were shadowed by possible conflicts of interest. Some participants in the competitions had financial ties to the juries, raising questions about the evaluation procedures.

MVRDV’s winning plan for the Asllan Rusi Sports Palace was presented as a “20-storey concrete ball”, drawing comment not only for its massing, but also for the institutional relationships that brought the project to the table without safeguards or broad public consultation.

However, AIC’s challenge became clearer when calls for investors in the National Library failed one after another, signalling a problem: developing ready-made projects, or the condition of returning around 45% of the floor area to the Corporation, did not attract interest.

In this context, an investor withdrew from VOID Tower, designed by Andrea Caputo for the former Albanian Telegraphic Agency site. AIC continued negotiating with the second company that had expressed interest, while by December there had been no public announcement of contracts with any of the investors that had won the announced calls.

The “AIC model” extends to the Zyber Hallulli orphanage

The second half of 2025 was marked by a series of announcements under AIC’s calls that revived the debate over the planning and use of public spaces.

Bjarke Ingels won the competition for the “Park of Faith” in Petrelë, on the ancient site of Përsqop, a project that promised cultural and tourism development but whose construction intensity raised serious concerns about preserving the area’s heritage and identity.

The government pushed ahead with the model of developing public properties through partnerships with private investors, arguing that funds were insufficient and that this also preserved spending for other budget items.

But AIC’s calls showed that this approach had lost its logic. The government showed that it had no money, or rather no will to invest, in administrative offices, new premises for social institutions or even cultural heritage buildings.

The first case was the Zyber Hallulli orphanage. The Corporation’s call revealed the gentrifying aim of relocating the orphanage to an area at the former German Villas to make room for a tower. This became more pronounced when the 5 finalists for the design and investment were selected.

The next case was the Palace of Congresses, a building of particular architectural importance, but one that the government does not consider worth fully restoring without losing public spaces. On the contrary, AIC’s call implied that interested private developers would be allowed to build a structure up to 20 storeys high beside the Palace of Congresses.

A year-end balance sheet full of questions

This is the Corporation’s second year of concrete work since it was reorganised and took over public properties from the government.

In 2024–25, AIC’s competitions awarded at least €1.4 million to the finalist groups of architects that participated.

But in a response to Citizens, the Corporation maintains that “all funds […] will be covered by the selected private partner [at the end of the process] and are not costs to the Corporation”.

At the end of 2025, the picture emerging from AIC concerns less the projects being put forward for development than the political model being consolidated: public property is seen as an asset to be “revitalised” through private investors, often without full competition, cost-benefit analyses or transparency about decision-making and the risk assumed by the state.

Many calls remained at the concept stage and slipped into oblivion or the “Closed Calls” section, while actual contracts are absent. This signals that the model does not appear to convince investors, nor citizens, whose questions remain unanswered.

If this approach continues, the risk of transforming different areas of Albania’s major cities is not merely architectural or urban.

It is a quiet transformation of the public interest in relation to private interests, in which the state appears to be turning into a kind of estate agent, losing its role as guarantor and becoming an intermediary for projects that increasingly encroach on shared space, without a clear vision of who really gains in the end.