From left: Donald Trump and Mitt Romney
Despite claiming earlier this week that he may still run for the position himself, developer Donald Trump may be planning to endorse former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney for president in Las Vegas today, sources told the Washington Post.
He is planning to make the announcement at 3.30 p.m., a senior Romney campaign office said. [more]
Donald TrumpDespite having withdrawn his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in May, New York real estate developer Donald Trump may still consider a run for president, he told CBS News yesterday, because “the country is going to hell in a handbasket” (see video after the jump). “I’m still thinking about it,” he told CBS’ Bob Schieffer. “We’ll see what happens.” [more]
Donald Trump and 40 Wall Street
Thanks to aggressive leasing deals, Donald Trump again has managed to improve 40 Wall Street’s value, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Leases for more than 600,000 square feet worth of space at the 1.3 million-square-foot office tower were set to expire in 2009, yet in the last six months the Trump Organization has managed to fill two-thirds of that space in a tepid office leasing environment. [more]
Donald Trump and Ferry Point Park
Critics have slammed the deal the city reached with Donald Trump for a championship golf course in the Bronx that doesn’t require the developer to pay any licensing for four years, but the New York Times noted that Trump and his Trump Golf company aren’t guaranteed to profit off the apparently sweet deal.
The city will spend more than $180 million to build the municipal course — mostly on taxpayers’ dimes — and leave Trump Golf to build only a $10 million clubhouse and operate the facility. [more]
Riverside South, the 77-acre former rail yard-turned condominiums between 59th and 72nd streets, is seeing an uptick in sales, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Aldyn, at 63rd Street and West End Avenue, is 50 percent sold, and the Rushmore, at Riverside Boulevard and 64th Street, is 90 percent sold, the Journal said. Both buildings are around 40 stories. In the third quarter of 2011 the average price for condominiums on Riverside Drive rose 19 percent, the Journal said, to $1,470 per square foot.
[more]
Compiled by Lauren Elkies
In the wake of Sandy Weill’s reported $88 million sale of his 15 Central Park West penthouse, The Real Deal wanted to touch base and see if real estate executives had any last minute predictions for the New Year since speaking with the magazine for the December residential market report.
Dottie Herman, president of Prudential Douglas Elliman, and Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty Partnership, said to expect 2012 to be a bit of a repeat of 2011, while developer Donald Trump said “really good real estate will have excess value.” Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates, predicts a “continuing strong demand for new condominium offerings all over town,” while Stuart Saft, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s global real estate department, said “the euro will continue to be in trouble causing a flight to safety to the U.S. and particularly New York City, so New York City properties will trade at even lower cap rates.” Meanwhile, Citi Habitats President Gary Malin and Halstead Property Development Marketing President Stephen Kliegerman recently told amNY that 2012 would bring more development and fewer amenities to New York City’s real estate market. [more]
From left: Robert Knakal and Jeff Sutton From the December issue: Sometimes, the Penn is mightier than the sword — at least when it comes to New York City’s real estate elite. The roster of “Wharton Mafia” — those who have graduated from the real estate program at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania — is long and illustrious.
The school — which now has a center named for billionaire investor Sam Zell and his late business partner — has churned out heavyweight grads like Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, William Mack, Richard Mack, Jeff Sutton, Andrew Isikoff, Jeff Blau, Robert Knakal, Andrew Mathias, David Brause and Ara Hovnanian.
The schooling can prove professionally transformative. For every heir like Trump or Mack who gains some polish, there are others with fewer — if any — connections who gain the New York real estate world partly through Wharton. [more]
Trump’s new book[Updated 11:55 a.m. on Dec. 6, 2011] The Donald has a lot to say in his latest book, out today. In between moderating debates for Fox News, taking gold bars as a deposit at 40 Wall Street, mulling a run for office and meeting with Republican presidential nominee hopefuls (as he did today with Newt Gingrich), Trump penned another political book: “Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again.”
In the latest advice volume, the developer of real estate from Israel to Florida, suggests that America’s problems are the result of President Barack Obama not loving America enough, that the only way to fix the deficit is to take Iraqi oil by force, and that Trump himself is worth a total of $7 billion, a disputed figure. [more]
One does not usually speak of commercial real estate in terms of the miraculous, but as regards the Apple’s iconic flagship on Fifth Avenue between 58th and 59th streets — which just got an overhaul of its façade– the term is almost appropriate. For 40 years prior to Apple’s arrival in New York City in 2007, this area was a commercial disaster, first as a sunken pit whose varied businesses enticed few to descend, then, in developer Donald Trump’s reworking, as a marble-encased hole in the ground that no business could be induced to lease.
Only a business founded on the notion of “thinking outside the box” could possibly make a go of it, and no business fits that description better than Apple. [more]
