Tbilisi’s city hall has ordered the demolition of the Rike Concert Hall by December 25, ending a 14-year standoff over one of Georgia’s costliest unfinished buildings. The tubular structure, designed by Italian architects Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas, has sat empty beside the Mtkvari River since construction stalled in 2012, and it never hosted a single performance.
The building outlived the government that commissioned it. The state that spent roughly $29 million building it later sold the land for a sliver of that price, and the buyers who ended up holding it now have official cover to erase it for a hotel.
City Hall Sets a December Deadline to Tear It Down
The demolition order came from Tbilisi’s Architecture Service, which approved the plan submitted by the company that owns the site by an order issued in late June, with the approval following a positive assessment from the Cultural Heritage Protection Council under the city hall.
Under that decision, the owner has until December 25 to demolish the building, a six-month window from the order’s signing. The permit covers a 14,591 square meter plot in Rike Park currently held by Rike Dom LLC, the company named in the city’s own paperwork.
Georgian officials had been openly hostile to the design for years before the paperwork caught up. The order itself traces back to a government decree issued in May 2025 that first floated demolition as an option for redeveloping the land.
The Government Never Hid Its Distaste for the Design
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze set the tone in May 2025, saying “this ugliness does not befit our beautiful capital.” Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze, who also serves as Georgian Dream’s secretary general, has repeated the sentiment every time the project resurfaces.
This is private property, a building that was absolutely non-functional. A garbage dump, one might say, in a very bad condition.
Kaladze told the Georgian newspaper Inter Press News, adding that the structure was “functionally unjustified” and that the private owner had decided on its own to tear it down. He said no design for whatever replaces it has been filed yet, and that the public will be told once one is.
The mayor’s office has leaned on the same “beautiful capital” framing before, most visibly when it strings festive lighting across ninety city streets each winter. Officials want a tidy, presentable skyline, and an abandoned periscope of glass and steel does not fit that picture.
Six Years of Design Work, Zero Performances
Studio Fuksas, the Italian firm behind the design, spent years developing a building meant to fuse a 566 seat music theatre with an exhibition hall in a single sculptural form. Construction ran from 2011 to 2012 under President Mikheil Saakashvili’s government, part of a broader push to modernize the capital.
On its own project page, the studio describes the design as a periscope to the city framing the historic core of Old Tbilisi, with the theatre hall soaring above the exhibition space so visitors in the foyer could look out over the river and skyline.
Then Georgia’s government changed. The 2012 transition to Georgian Dream suspended the project before its interior was finished, and it never reopened. The Rike Tubes, as locals nicknamed the twin forms, is not Fuksas’s only Tbilisi credit. The studio also designed the city’s Public Service Hall, which did open.
Seven Auctions and a Fire-Sale Price
The building’s second act was almost as troubled as its first. By 2020, Kaladze was telling reporters that no investor wanted the site even for free, because finishing it would cost tens of millions more on top of what had already gone in.
The state finally found a buyer in 2022, on the seventh attempt after six failed auctions, and at a small fraction of what the project had cost to build.
| Year | Event | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| 2011 to 2012 | Construction begins and stalls under a new government | About GEL 75 million ($29 million) spent of an estimated GEL 89 million budget |
| 2020 | Kaladze says no buyer will take it, even free | Completion would need roughly GEL 20 million ($8 million) more |
| 2022 | Seventh auction succeeds after six failures | Sold for 10.02 million lari, about $3.1 million |
| May 2025 | Government decree swaps the museum plan for a hotel | Revised terms set a GEL 44 million investment floor |
| June 2026 | City Hall issues the demolition permit | Deadline of December 25 to finish the work |
The 2022 buyer was Global Victory Trust, a company owned by businessman Davit Khidasheli, who has been described as close to Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili. The auction’s original terms required a museum of wine, digital art and technology within three years. That museum was never built.
The site’s opening price had once been set at 47.5 million lari despite a 50 percent discount, and buyers still would not bite until the price fell far further.
Who Really Controls Rike Dom?
Ownership of the site has changed hands twice in the past year alone, and the picture is genuinely contested. City Hall’s own order names Rike Dom LLC as the legal owner, but who stands behind that company depends on which report a reader trusts.
- Davit Khidasheli – sold the site to his own company Rike Dom in May 2025, months after buying it in 2022.
- Emin Uchar – a Turkish-Georgian businessman named by multiple outlets as the owner of Makro Constructions, which reportedly acquired the property in June 2025.
- Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas – the architects whose design is now set to disappear entirely.
- Irakli Abesadze – a lawyer who leads the NGO Civil Participation Center and has publicly challenged the ownership chain.
Abesadze wrote that the arrangement amounts to “large scale corruption,” arguing that it effectively handed one of the country’s best investment plots away for almost nothing.
- What We Know: City Hall’s demolition order lists Rike Dom LLC as the site’s owner, and separate reporting ties the property’s June 2025 sale to Makro Constructions and Emin Uchar.
- The 2022 buyer, Global Victory Trust, was owned by Davit Khidasheli, who transferred the asset to his company Rike Dom in May 2025 before it changed hands again.
- What’s Unconfirmed: Abesadze’s NGO alleges Rike Dom is directed by a Business Ombudsman office employee who manages shares tied to a Georgian Dream member of parliament.
- The development company Archi Group has denied any connection to the purchase, and the ultimate beneficial owner has not been independently verified.
No Design Has Reached City Hall Yet
Nothing has been filed to replace the tubes. Kaladze has said repeatedly that the owner must submit a new plan before city hall will weigh in on it, and that nothing exists on paper yet.
Critics want something closer to preservation than replacement. A Georgia Today opinion piece argued the buildings deserved the kind of second look that turned Paris’s Centre Pompidou and Bilbao’s Guggenheim from derided oddities into landmarks, rather than a hotel.
Georgian Dream lawmaker and NGO critic Abesadze has raised a starker prediction, saying the replacement could include not just a hotel but a casino and restaurants. City Hall has not confirmed any of that. For now, Kaladze says only that he expects “one of the best projects” to eventually rise on the site, once the current one is gone.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are the Rike Tubes in Tbilisi?
The Rike Tubes are twin glass, concrete and stainless steel structures in Tbilisi’s Rike Park, designed by Studio Fuksas to house a 566 seat music theatre and an exhibition hall. Georgian press has also called them the Rike Jugs, Rike Docks and Rike Jars, all English renderings of the same local nickname for their tube like shape.
Why Was the Rike Concert Hall Never Used?
Construction stalled after Georgia’s 2012 change of government, which suspended the project before its interior was finished. Successive administrations distanced themselves from the Saakashvili era building program, and no government since has funded its completion.
Who Owns the Rike Park Site Now?
City Hall’s demolition order names Rike Dom LLC as the legal owner. Reporting from multiple outlets ties the company to Turkish-Georgian businessman Emin Uchar’s Makro Constructions, though an NGO has separately alleged a different, undisclosed beneficial owner, a claim the developer Archi Group denies.
What Will Replace the Demolished Building?
A 2025 government decree earmarked the site for a hotel, and revised privatization terms set a minimum investment of GEL 44 million. No architectural design, brand or timeline has been submitted to city hall as of the demolition permit’s approval.
When Must the Demolition Be Finished?
The Architecture Service’s order gives the owner until December 25 to complete the dismantling, roughly six months after the permit was issued in late June 2026.
