Ivanka Trump shares plans for 'massive' off-the-grid private island in the Mediterranean
Ivanka Trump has opened up about her plans to build on a 'massive' off-the-grid private island.
Ivanka, who is the eldest daughter of United States President Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana, as well as former official senior advisor during both of Trump's presidential administrations, has revealed that she swam to a 1,400-hectare Mediterranean island in order to put out feelers for her next project.
Alongside her husband, Jared Kushner, Ivanka is backing a 'massive' resort project on Albania's coastline, focused on Sazan Island.
Sazan Island is an Albanian uninhabited island in the Adriatic Sea.
Advert
It's the largest of Albania's islands and is a designated military exclusion zone lying in a strategically important location between the Strait of Otranto and the mouth of the Bay of Vlorë, which marks the border between the Adriatic and Ionian seas.
The island in question has been off-grid for decades but is now at the centre of the Mediterranean's fast-growing luxury tourism developments.
"I am working on an incredible project with my husband in the Mediterranean. It's massive in scale," she told podcaster David Senra in an interview which aired on YouTube last week (31 March). "It's an unbelievable, beautiful 1,400-hectare island in the middle of the Mediterranean."
She continued: "We were on a friend's boat, we stopped for a swim, and effectively that's how we found it. We swam to the island, we went on a hike barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated, and it stayed with us ever since."
She continued: "And over the course of many years, we developed the opportunity to help realise its potential and transform it, but with a lot of restraint and care because the land is so beautiful that, really, the architecture has to be fully integrated into it, almost rise from it.
"You know, it's not even a business for me, despite the scale of it. Not only the island, but we have five miles of beachfront directly across from the island, this beautiful peninsula with a lagoon on one side, the ocean on the other, and beautiful white sand beaches.
"For me, it feels more like a challenge than anything else. The culmination of all of my experience in real estate, all of my travel, and a lot of reflection on how I want to live, how I think people increasingly are wanting to live and trying to really build something that's a tangible manifestation of that."
Ivanka added: "That requires a lot of vision, the collaboration of some of the greatest masters that exist.
"I was just there walking the land, really just trying to sort of be with it and experience it alongside some of the greatest living architects of our time, like true masters of their craft, people with integrity so absolute, like there will be no compromise.
"And that's something we want to create there. So we're very excited."
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, US News, Europe
Rhiannon Ingle