“Comment is free, but facts are sacred.” — C. P. Scott, 1921.
“A park of towers”: Another project begins at the former Republican Guard site
Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 13 March 2026
The former Republican Guard site at the entrance to Tirana’s Grand Park by the Artificial Lake is gradually turning into a “park of towers”. The latest development appears to be compounding an urban planning problem left unresolved for years: the road.
In this space, initially promised as a park for citizens, a road connection between Ibrahim Rugova and Dora d’Istria streets had been planned since 2020. It would create a traffic corridor and ease congestion at one of the park’s busiest entrances.
But today, six years later, another construction site for a new tower is opening instead of the road.
The project is called “Garda Tower” and envisages a building with 33 storeys above ground and five underground, rising around 120 metres. It is being developed by Artech Group in cooperation with El-Prom, a company that recently changed its name to Hasalami.
The architectural concept was developed in collaboration with the German firm Kuehn Malvezzi, and a model of the project was publicly presented at the Bread & Heart architecture festival in June 2025 (photo).
For local residents, however, the new development has an immediate impact: the space available to pass along Adem Jashari Street is shrinking.
The construction fencing has left a pavement on only one side, and even that is extremely narrow, around 40 to 50 centimetres, making pedestrian access almost token. The space on the construction side was mainly used for parking, but it still left room to pass.
How the tower’s plot was assembled
According to the approved site plan, the project is being built on nine separate plots brought together through agreements with the owners of existing one- to three-storey buildings in the area where Ibrahim Rugova Street is supposed to connect with Dora d’Istria Street.
But the development excludes five other plots containing three buildings of two to six storeys (photo: topographic map and site plan). These properties remain outside the project and will continue to block completion of the road corridor envisaged by local detailed plan (PDV) TR/169.
This creates a paradox: a tower can be built immediately, while the road that justified opening up and developing the area remains on hold.
When Tirana Municipality drew up local detailed plan TR/169, the former Republican Guard site was presented as a space that would be returned to the city. The idea was for the area to serve as an extension of the Artificial Lake park.
For this reason, some plots on the planned road’s alignment were classified as “sub-units for transfer”.
In urban planning practice, this means owners can be compensated by developing another property elsewhere in the city.
This mechanism is often used to avoid the high cost of state expropriation.
In many cases, public authorities expect private developers to include these plots in their projects and contribute to public infrastructure, such as roads or public spaces, in exchange for higher permitted building density.
More storeys, then, in exchange for space for the city. In this case, however, the density is not delivering new public infrastructure.
For Garda Tower, though not for it alone, the mechanism appears to work in only one direction.
By incorporating some of the plots on the planned road into the development, the developers have secured high building density.
The building’s footprint is expected to cover 487.6 m2 out of 1,220.71 m2 spread across several plots. The project envisages around 20,300 m2 of construction.
But the five other plots that also lie on the road’s alignment have been left out of the agreements with the developers. This means the road corridor cannot be completed without public expropriations or new development negotiations.
The way the project is unfolding, however, does not depend solely on the private developer’s choices.
Garda Tower’s building permit was approved by the National Council of Territory and Water, in other words, the government, allowing development only on the plots assembled by the investor and bypassing the logic of the local detailed plan drawn up by Tirana Municipality, which envisaged transfer mechanisms for plots lying on the planned road.
The planning instruments intended to open the road corridor were thus left on paper, while development was allowed to proceed without resolving the area’s urban planning problem.
In other words, part of the cost that should have been addressed within the private development may end up being paid from the public budget, which also means an even longer wait for the road to materialize.
Urban planning is being adapted to the projects
The construction site’s layout suggests that the section of road that should be opened to connect with Dora d’Istria Street will remain blocked for a long time.
The company has extended the fenced area almost to the middle of the existing road, along the boundaries of the properties acquired for development, further narrowing the space for traffic. Its office told us this extension would be temporary, “until the demolitions are completed”, after which “the construction site will be pulled back to the area where the building works will take place, freeing up the space for the road’s construction”.
The site plan also shows the new tower being built very close to an existing five-storey apartment building, while the road corridor remains incomplete.
This means that even after the building is completed, construction of the road will remain an open issue for the future.
But Garda Tower is not an isolated project. The former Republican Guard site has already become one of Tirana’s most intensive centres of vertical development.
Currently under construction there are Platinum Tower, at around 35 storeys, and the National Children’s Cultural Centre.
A new building for the National Library, around 18 storeys high, is also planned for the same area.
The Albanian Investment Corporation has twice launched a process to find investors for this project, and both attempts have failed. Its development remains unclear, although it has been said that the company X-One will build it.
Alongside these projects, the Grand Park Skyline complex has also been proposed: three towers reaching up to 71 storeys, one of the tallest developments planned for the capital, expected to be built over the sites of several existing apartment buildings by the same company, X-One.
Together, these buildings are creating a vertical corridor along one of the main entrances to the lake park.
In urban planning, infrastructure should precede development. Roads, transport, public spaces, water networks, electricity and telecommunications provide the city’s functional foundation, on which urban density then develops.
This principle ensures that development is sustainable and does not create problems. But in Tirana, the opposite has always happened.
Density is built first, while infrastructure is left to be addressed later. In some cases, building density is used as a bargaining tool to secure public infrastructure too.
Garda Tower and the other projects at the former Republican Guard site illustrate this logic. They add substantial building volumes to an already congested urban junction without resolving one of the area’s main problems: the road connection.
Instead of creating new public spaces or improving traffic flow, the projects increase pressure on existing infrastructure. The development being offered to the area thus provides no urban solution, but deepens its principal problem: the lack of space.
*The information on the project’s footprint and the extent of the construction site was clarified following communication with the company.