On the northern Dalmatian Coast of Croatia, three luxury villas are rising on a hillside over the Adriatic Sea. The trio of modern homes, in the small town of Sukosan, is the brainchild of Marko Banic, a real estate investor and former professional basketball player who launched the project with a singular goal in mind: to honor basketball legend Kobe Bryant.
Mr. Banic first crossed paths with Mr. Bryant in 2008 at the Summer Olympics in Beijing, where he was a power forward for the Croatian men’s basketball team. He had long admired the American superstar, who was at the Olympics to captain Team U.S.A., particularly his relentless hunger to win.
But after meeting Mr. Bryant at the opening ceremony, Mr. Banic found another reason to idolize the him.
“He was the most friendly guy,” said Mr. Banic, 41. “He was always smiling, taking photos, signing autographs. He had an amazing personality. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.” (Mr. Bryant played on two U.S. Olympic teams, winning gold medals in 2008 and 2012.)
The Kobe villas, as Mr. Banic calls them, are dedicated to the legacy of Mr. Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash in 2020 alongside his daughter Gianna Bryant and seven other people. “I love what Kobe represented,” he said. “His fight, his dedication, and the sacrifices that he made during his career were huge. Inspirational. I wanted to make something special to honor his name.”
(Representatives for Mr. Bryant’s estate did not respond to requests for comment.)
Mr. Banic grew up in Zadar, Croatia, a Roman-era city with a rich architectural legacy. As a boy, he said, he’d often hide in his family’s basement during the Bosnian War, which ran from 1992 to 1995. “It was a dark time in our history,” he said. “I can say that after 30 years, Croatia, maybe in the last three to five years, has fully recovered from the war. The process of recovery was long.”
He began his professional career in 2002 with his hometown team, KK Zadar, and went on to play for clubs in Spain, Turkey, Germany and Russia. When he retired in 2019 at the age of 35, much of the money he’d saved wasn’t from playing basketball, but from flipping apartments in Croatia and Spain. That became the seed money for the Kobe villas.
“When you stop playing, it’s a huge shock because this is what you’ve done all your life,” Mr. Banic said. “So I spent the last year of my basketball career dreaming about what I was going to do.”
In 2023, he bought just under an acre of land in Sukosan, a small town about seven miles up the coast from Zadar. Unlike Zadar, Sukosan still has vacant hillsides with panoramic views of the Adriatic Sea. But they’re going fast — Mr. Banic’s construction site is one of many in the area. The town’s proximity to Zadar, which has an international airport, a large marina and high-end restaurants, has turned it into “a popular spot,” he said.
He’d begun working with architects, builders, engineers and landscapers in 2022 to conceive the three villas: Kobe Gold, Kobe Purple and Kobe Black. The first two are references to Mr. Bryant’s 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, whose uniforms are gold and purple. Kobe Black is a nod to the “Black Mamba,” Mr. Bryant’s nickname on the court.
A portrait of Mr. Bryant framed in gold, purple and black will be placed in the foyer of each villa. Buyers will have the option to keep the painting or remove it.
Construction commenced on Kobe Gold in January and is scheduled to be completed in December with a list price of $3.85 million.
Low green hills provide a backdrop to the four-bedroom, six-bath home. Located on a small road less than a mile from a public beach and Sukosan’s yacht club, the 5,000-square-foot villa is cast in concrete and comes with a two-car garage equipped with electric-car chargers. The first floor will have an open-concept living room with ceramic floors, a dining room, a gym with a jacuzzi, a sauna, a wine cellar and an elevator. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors open the living area to a terrace with an infinity pool overlooking the sea and the Croatian island of Pasman.
The top two floors, reached by staircase or elevator, both contain two bedrooms with wood floors and a full bathroom. All four bedrooms have a balcony. The glass-gated roof will house a bar area, a second infinity pool and an enclosed pergola. Kobe Gold is being sold furnished. (Construction on Kobe Purple and Kobe Black is expected to begin in 2026.)
Mr. Banic said that all of the glass on the property is from Croatia, while the appliances are from Italy and Germany. “I have the same super-huge ambitions that I had in basketball when it comes to this,” he said. “I want to be the MVP investor of luxury villas in Croatia.”
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