BELGRADE, Serbia — Bojan Bjelobaba, the owner of a carwash and auto-repair shop in Belgrade, says he has been threatened for refusing to vacate his 38-year-old business so that it could be razed to make way for a park.

It’s part of a development, with an investment of 3 billion euros, or about $3.6 billion, that is taking shape in Serbia’s capital along the east bank of the Sava River. An extravagant and controversial project known as the Belgrade Waterfront, it is at the heart of a plan by Serbia’s governing elite to transform this aging European metropolis into the Dubai of the Balkans.

A married couple, Ivan and Vida Timotijevic, who live smack in the middle of the development, have had their electricity and water cut off because they refuse to budge. If the government has its way, a boulevard will run through the site where their house sits.

They are among the last of the holdouts staring down the development.

The project of luxury skyscrapers and sprawling shopping malls has become a symbol of the plan of Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, to give the city “a new identity,” removed from the country’s militant past and international isolation.