Posted on 05/30/2002 8:57:54 PM PDT by Spar
Tower Bombed by NATO to Symbolize New Serbia
Thu May 30,12:36 PM ET
Serbian property developer Miodrag Kostic stands in front of an office tower May 25, 2002, which was bombed during the NATO air campaign over Belgrade three years ago. Kostic, whose consortium won a tender last year to purchase the tower and turn it into a modern office complex, invited NATO pilots who bombed the building to come to Belgrade and shake hands on opening day. Photo by Ivan Milutinovic/Reuters
By Douglas Hamilton
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - Serbian property developer Miodrag Kostic would like to meet the NATO (news - web sites) pilots who bombed a landmark Belgrade office tower three years ago.
"I'm serious. This is an invitation," he said, jerking a thumb at 23 stories of fire-blackened, windowless concrete and twisted steel that inflames his business imagination.
"Whoever it was should come here and shake hands on opening day. Because that was history, but this is going to be a symbol of the new Serbia."
This month, the ice around Yugoslavia started to break up. Top men of Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites)'s regime went to The Hague (news - web sites) in the Netherlands to face war crimes charges, the International Monetary Fund (news - web sites) granted a big loan, and Washington ended a freeze on financial assistance.
All of this made headlines here. But Kostic believes "you have to show the people something concrete to convince them things really are going to get better."
In downtown Belgrade, tottering piles of fenced-off rubble offer Serbs a depressing reminder of 78 days in 1999 when their country was under aerial attack by the United States and its European allies to drive Serbian forces out of Kosovo.
Down on the banks of the Danube, by contrast, Kostic's vision of a 21st century capital is taking shape, around the still solid core of one building that NATO failed to take down.
On a Wednesday night starting the fifth week of bombing -- a milestone the shocked alliance never dreamed it would see -- NATO struck at a slim, rectangular tower housing the headquarters of then President Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party.
Going after political targets in Belgrade itself was a deliberate escalation meant to show defiant Serbian leaders that NATO would not back off. On the following night, Milosevic's villa was hit. On Friday, state television was knocked out.
BLUEPRINTS SECRET
The tower was still on fire come daylight, badly mangled. But no one had been inside and no one was hurt.
"Formerly, this was the symbol of the communist regime," said Kostic, whose consortium won a tender last year to purchase the tower and turn it into a modern office complex at the center of what is to be Belgrade's first large shopping mall.
Unlike Manhattan-style skyscrapers designed to collapse inward when they're eventually demolished, the Belgrade tower was built in 1960 around a supporting core sprouting from foundations more than 100 feet deep in sand.
"The drawings of this building were top secret, because it was one of the most important buildings in the history of Yugoslavia, the headquarters of the Communist Party," said the 42-year-old economics graduate.
He believes NATO intended to topple the tower, which stands alone in several acres of undeveloped riverside land, but didn't know where to aim its precision-guided munitions.
"They missed the central part of the building. They aimed for it but just missed the core," he said.
Dramatic Reuters Television pictures of the initial strike -- the tower was hit for a second time eight days later -- show two fiery explosions in the night at the base of the tower and, several seconds later, a mighty blast down through its roof.
But tests on the damaged structure, undertaken before renovation work began this spring and currently being evaluated by independent Swiss experts, showed it still has 100 percent weight stability and 87 percent earthquake (news - web sites) stability.
"It's a miracle," said Kostic.
Rapidly sketching the tower during an interview at his offices in the city of Novi Sad, Kostic explained its unique combination support structures.
"The hit at the top was successful. It destroyed three floors and this we'll have to clear out completely and build new," he said, displaying a plexiglass model of the futuristic edifice that is to grace the Belgrade skyline next year.
AN ADDRESS WITH A STORY
Each day, half of Belgrade can see red-suited workers dangling on ropes to strip the bomb-blistered facade from the tower.
Prospective tenants of its offices "will know the history of this building" and will want to move in, Kostic said.
But the tower's scorched past may also give it some cachet with incoming foreign tenants.
"We're stripping it to the bones. It will have all new wiring, air-conditioning, and glass and very little walls. We're creating 900 square meters (9,700 square feet) of open-plan space on every floor," Kostic said.
"This is only the first phase of the project. There's about 60,000 square meters (650,000 square feet) around the building. We are starting in January to build the first big shopping mall for Belgrade."
Deploring a decade which Yugoslavia lost to ethnic war, Kostic points out that post-communist Budapest, capital of Serbia's neighbor Hungary, already has 10 Western-style shopping malls.
"The main problem for us here is financing," he said. "We don't have $100 million in the bank."
While Austrian banks with long knowledge of the Balkans have been more understanding and adventurous, investors further afield still seem wary of political instability.
"People in the United States either have no idea where Yugoslavia is or they have a very negative idea of us," said Kostic.
As that perception clears, he expects competition from foreign developers to sharpen. But he believes he already has cornered one of Belgrade's best sites and could cope with more, if only the official gears would turn faster.
"Government, especially the federal government, is slow and I don't see any reason why they don't open auctions for all these (bomb site) buildings," he said, noting that American and Israeli companies were bidders to develop the tower.
For now, Serbia is governed by a coalition of 18 parties, in addition to a costly Yugoslav federal level of government to take in restive junior partner Montenegro.
It is not a structure that radiates stability or clarity to outsiders and its many-layered, Kafkaesque bureaucracy can be even more daunting than NATO bombs.
"One of the main reasons we're glad we didn't have to take the building down is that here you would need six to 12 months just to get the official paperwork for that," said Kostic. "Approval to repair it is much faster."
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