Posted on February 13, 2018
By Svilen Petrov, Maritime Herald
The Prince wants to “steal” the Mediterranean between 300,000 and 350,000 square meters, in order to build a futuristic urban complex in its bay
Monte Carlo has many attractions: the best oranges and the best nightclub on the French Riviera, Jimmy’z Place du Casino; the moths that swarm around the Casino and the Hotel de Paris bar; the most profitable Bentley car dealers in Europe; the Francis Bacon Foundation; one of the best oceanographic museums in the world; a great Formula 1 prize … millionaires and billionaires are seduced by another very erotic temptation: taxation …
More than 30% of the 38,000 official residents in Monaco – which has an area of just 2 square kilometers – are millionaires. Another 2,700 millionaires are officially or unofficially waiting for a resident permit. By 2026, some 16,500 millionaires or billionaires will reside in the diminutive principality.
The principality of the Grimaldi, from century XIII, has one of the densest demographic densities of the world. Its population of rich, very rich and mega rich is equally exceptional.
What to do to give shelter, housing, services, and recreation to this ultra-wealthy population? The Prince Albert II had many years -before the death of his father does, the Prince Rainier – a “revolutionary” idea “steal” the Mediterranean between 300,000 and 350,000 square meters, in order to build a futuristic urban complex in the bay of Monaco, between the aquatic reserve of Larvotto and the nature reserve of Spéluges. The great crisis of 2007/2008 gave the project a break that lasted several years, to re-launch in 2013/2014. Now it is entering its new phase: cleaning and dredging the underwater bottoms of the territorial waters of Monaco, in order to begin the construction of the foundations of the future urban complex, with public and private financing, in which several European and North American investment funds will participate.
Prince Albert II decided, in his day, that the new Monaco of the 21st century would have an “environmentalist” and “environmental” vocation, without losing its fiscal attractions. That new Monaco will be partially underwater and the future city will be the marine extension of the old medieval fortress, within a few years.
Meanwhile, those perspectives and the traditional charms of the principality have returned to re-launch the price of housing, which already ranges between 50,000 and 100,000 euros per square meter. While the 21st century Monaco continues to be built, slowly, with delicate cleaning and dredging works of the submarine bottoms, before beginning to lay the foundations of a futuristic city, devoted to business and the art of living more millionaire and cosmopolitan, the old principality continues to renew its different offers of luxury, leisure and voluptuousness, at a strong price.
The Monaco marine extension is one of the most ambitious and “revolutionary” projects in the history of the principality. Prince Albert I began the great modernization of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the “discovery” of “tourism” of the ultra-rich, not just nobility. Prince Rainier transformed a mortgaged and threatened inheritance, around 1945, into a fabulous family “empire”.
Source: Maritime Herald
