Word: munk
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...idea for the development, says Munk, came to him while on holiday. For the past 20 years his family has chartered a yacht on the Mediterranean. In that time, he couldn't help noticing how the old marinas at Monaco, St. Tropez, Antibes and elsewhere had no easy way to expand even as more and more huge yachts came off the production lines. As a result, berth rental prices shot up. At Antibes, for example, they've risen nearly 30% in five years...
...when the government of what was then Serbia and Montenegro approached him in 2004 with an idea to privatize an old Austro-Hungarian-era arsenal not far from Kotor, Munk met Djukanovic and says he "fell in love" with him. Djukanovic lent him a government helicopter to look at the site: "It was mind-blowing," Munk recalls. "I saw these frigates and warships and submarines and thought that here a superyacht would feel right at home...
...bought a project." In addition to creating an estimated 5,000 jobs when finished, the investors agreed to clean up the waters around the site, buy out about 480 workers who lost their jobs when the shipyard shut down, and upgrade Tivat's sewage and water-supply systems. Munk is even offering local students scholarships to Canadian universities. Initial hostility from opposition politicians who accused him of planning to auction off the land for a quick buck has abated. "This is just the kind of project that Montenegro needs," says Rade Ratkovic, a professor at the Faculty for Tourism, Hospitality...
...Munk isn't the only one smitten by the charms of Montenegro. The luxury hotel chain Amanresorts is renovating two of the finest sites on the coast. And an influx of Russians is already making it the fastest-growing tourist destination in the world. Billboards promising "choice properties" in Russian Cyrillic script line the avenues of coastal towns like Becici. Property prices have shot up, rising as much as fivefold in Tivat over the past five years. A building boom, meanwhile, is gobbling up green space. Pavle Jurlina, a pharmacist in Tivat, says his cousin just sold off land that...
...Djukanovic has played a leading role in most of his country's turbulent events over the past 20 years. With offhand pride, he says that his European colleagues now confide in him that Montenegro has become "boring." For diplomats, that is probably true. But for Peter Munk and the well-heeled visitors who may one day flock to the marina, hotels and cafés of Porto Montenegro, the thrill is yet to come...