Vlorë, Albania: Between Gold Rush and Ghosts

Sea & Shore

May 1

A drive through Vlorë reveals Albania in flux: glimmering façades, ghost buildings, investment fever, and EU hopes colliding with contradictions—and I was right in the middle of it.

I didn’t plan to stop long in Vlorë. Just another coastal stretch on the way south. But then the city grabbed me by the collar and said: “Look closer.”

On one side of the road, women hang laundry between cracked balconies. On the other, a freshly poured concrete skeleton already promises “Sea View Luxury.” Real estate billboards sprout like weeds—“Poseidon Residence,” “Vlora Marina,” and who knows what else, all fighting for your gaze with loud fonts and glossy renderings of a life no one here lives.

And then I learn this isn’t just local optimism. Jared Kushner—the Jared Kushner—is building a luxury resort right off the coast. Sazan Island, once a military base, now headed for billion-dollar transformation with eco-lux villas, elite access, and who knows what kinds of barbed-wire boundaries in the name of paradise. Strategic investor status secured. Welcome to Albania’s new patrons.

But while the headlines chase Kushner, I watch a man tying his boat to a rock by a crumbling quay. Behind him, a rust-streaked building leans slightly inland as if reluctant to watch what’s happening. And honestly, I get it.

Because Vlorë isn’t gentrifying. It’s being re-scripted in real time. Part Riviera, part raw past, part experiment. One street is cafés with QR codes and espresso martinis. The next is broken pavement and mattress stores with washing machines in the window.

I order seafood in the midst of posh riviera piers (exceptionally fresh and creatively prepared), watch a group of realtors photographing a hole in the ground, and wonder: what happens to a place that gets sold before it finds itself?

The EU is within sight, they say. You can feel that too—in the way construction pushes faster than logic, in the way foreign money talks louder than the local pace. Progress, sure. But who’s deciding the shape of it?