Finally some good news for what was one of the premier resorts in Dalmatia, the Belgrade Resort on Hvar?
Although it used to be held in high regard and was opened during both summers and winters, former resort and rehabilitation centre for children from Belgrade at the Zenčišće Bay in Jelsa on Hvar has been a ruin for many years. It is a potential source of diseases at the eastern entrance to the well-known tourist area, so the leadership of Jelsa has repeatedly tried to solve the problem. It seems that the current municipal mayor Nikša Peronja has finally succeeded, since by the end of the year the Office for State Property Management will reportedly announce a tender for giving the resort in a long-term lease for 40 or 50 years, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on December 4, 2015.
Former “Belgrade Resort” consisted of several two-story buildings and common areas such as reception, offices, TV lounge, kitchen, two restaurants and night clubs, pizzeria, library, classrooms, dormitories, shop, health clinic, swimming pool, playgrounds for football, handball and basketball, warehouses, garages, gas station, boiler room, fascinating observation tower and several workshops, with total area of 8,400 square meters and land area of 64,000 square metres.
A ray of hope for better future for the facility appeared a few years ago when Adriatic Investments, Danko Končar’s company, bought the resort from the Property Directorate of the Republic of Serbia. The entrepreneur known as “the king of chrome” paid 6.25 million euros for the property. His son Nenad announced additional investments of at least 30 million euros, with the construction of additional commercial and recreational facilities, as well as luxury villas, which would result with 850 beds in total and employ between 150 and 200 workers.
However, the state objected to the transaction and has not allowed the company to acquire the property. “Assets relating to legal entities and subject to the issue of succession of states of former Yugoslavia are the property of the Republic of Croatia, and the agreements according to which these legal entities used such assets are considered to be invalid. It is true that we are preparing to launch the procedures to lease these properties through a public tender, which will define the conditions and the starting price”, the Office for State Property Management said in a statement.
At the beginning of the war, the former resort first housed the Croatian National Guard troops, and later accommodated displaced persons and refugees. Croatian Privatization Fund tried to sell it on as many as 15 occasions. It failed, even though the asking price dropped from the initial 7 million German marks to just 2.8 million marks. The sale could not be further pursued since the property became entangled in the succession issue, and that means that properties like this cannot be sold or returned to owners until a bilateral agreement is signed between Croatia and Serbia.
It follows that the only remaining option is a long-term lease, although many claim that nothing can be done there without complete demolition and construction of a completely new facility. The Municipality of Jelsa, which has so far invested nearly half a million kuna in cleaning operations, hopes that all problems will be solved during 2016, so that the resort at Zenčišće could soon open more than 100 new jobs for the inhabitants of Hvar. The only thing which is not clear is why we had to wait several decades for something like this to happen.
