Donald Trump has always been a brash marketer, and critics hope his plans to build at Jones Beach are in keeping with the location’s character. The real estate impresario, known for erecting monuments to conspicuous consumption, is involved with a controversial $26 million quasi-public plan to open a restaurant and catering operation called Trump on the Ocean.
It will occupy a plum spot along the Central Mall at Jones Beach State Park on Long Island and put the Trump name at the center of a park that developer Robert Moses considered his crown jewel.
Trump on the Ocean, which is expected to draw the overwhelming percentage of its revenue from catering, is slated to accommodate as many as 1,400 people and feature broad views of the Atlantic Ocean with indoor and beachfront dining. Plans indicate it would be almost four times the size of Robert Moses’ original Boardwalk Restaurant, which overlooked the 1.9-mile promenade.
But the project has been no walk in the park for the mega-developer, thanks to backlash from critics who say Trump and his partner in the development, Long Island catering giant Steven Carl, got a sweetheart deal for the concession. The team is paying less in percentage terms than any other major state parks concession, and has a 40-year lease, longer than any other state parks contract except the Maid of the Mist boat ride at Niagara Falls, according to Newsday. Others say the scale of the project and Trump’s flashy style are wrong for the oceanfront park, which was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places.
It won’t be the first time a brand name will be emblazoned across a building in the public park. Last year, the photography brand Nikon was given exclusive naming rights to the Jones Beach Theater, which is now known as Nikon at Jones Beach Theater.
Earlier this year, Trump brought Miss USA Tara Conner to Jones Beach to promote the facility in one of her first public appearances after a scandal tarnished her reputation. The move was signature Trump, as is a plan to display his logo on 7.5-foot-tall signs, despite existing park restrictions on commercial signage. Fears that the project would only cater to high-paying customers prompted Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s administration to require Trump’s team to redo its plans, asking that the public not be shunted to the back of the building, away from the sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean.
With frontage on the Boardwalk, the 37,291-square-foot building will be made of limestone and glass with elements inspired by the surrounding historic structures, which date to the late 1920s and early ’30s, when the park was created. The structure will be built on the now-empty site of the Boardwalk Restaurant, which was demolished in 2004.
As Trump told Newsday with a flourish of his signature promotional sensibility, “We’re doing a building that will be superior to anything in Jones Beach, old or new. There will be nothing like this in the United States.”
Ground is expected to be broken soon. Intensive work will start in the fall, and completion is scheduled for next summer.
Architect says fears unwarranted
According to the project’s architect, descriptions of the building tend to sensationalize its size. Laid out like a two-story, split-level ranch, the footprint will take up less than an acre of the seven-acre site.
“People aren’t sure what to expect,” said the project’s architect, Michael J. Russo at Hawkins Webb Jaeger Associates in Melville, N.Y. “They read things in the paper and think this is going to be a skyscraper or a casino or some kind of monster, but it’ll be low-slung and fit within the park’s schematic.”
When the original restaurant opened in 1936, $2.25 bought a seafood dinner and a night of dancing to orchestras led by Ozzie Nelson and Vic Lombardo. In its heyday, the Boardwalk Restaurant offered white-glove service and linen tablecloths.
After the original building burned down in 1964, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill rebuilt the restaurant in 1966 and added an al fresco dining option at the Garden Caf .
Trump’s project sits at the heart of the park, in the shadow of the iconic 231-foot water tower that dominates the traffic circle formed by the junction of Ocean Parkway and Wantagh Parkway. The project’s temporary displacement of the pitch-and-putt golf course to allow for a 252-space expansion of the parking area also drew opponents’ ire. Signs announcing Trump’s intention to reopen the golf course next summer hang along Ocean Parkway.
State officials have said that a restaurant alone would not be able to keep a project at the beachfront establishment afloat, which makes the catering hall integral to the business plan. Catering would bring in 85 percent of revenues. A nightclub would contribute another 10 percent, and the restaurant would contribute the rest. The business plan expects to gross $1.5 billion over the course of the 40-year lease, approved last December by the outgoing state Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Commissioner Bernadette Castro.
How to fight a done deal?
Preservationists and Nassau County officials have vowed to win more concessions from what they consider to be a done deal, since the project is approved and on state land, and no one seems willing to raise the funds to mount a nuisance lawsuit.
“I’m calling around to see how to approach this,” said Alexandra Wolfe, director of preservation services at the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities. “This project is very big and has some features we’ve identified that run counter to the vision of the park’s founder, Robert Moses.”
But architect Russo said he aims to stay true to the heritage of the park at the world’s largest public beach.
“We’re trying to bring back the original vision of Robert Moses, to make Jones Beach into a destination for everybody,” said Russo. “The prior restaurant didn’t fit; it was cold and was an afterthought to most peoples’ experiences. It’s expensive to build on the ocean, but a lot of money is being put in with the gamble that we’ll be able to build positive memories for the people who visit.
“The site presents many challenges,” Russo said. “I’m thinking about the users, which include the person power walking on the Boardwalk, couples and families strolling, people coming for a function and others coming off the beach to have lunch. I’m trying to understand their points of view and deliver a startling building.”
There are other contentious issues surrounding the project. Another critic, Harvey Levinson, chairman of the Nassau County Board of Assessors, attempted to get Trump to agree to a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes settlement for the Wantagh school and fire districts, which serve Jones Beach. Levinson sought around $1 million a year from Trump, so far to no avail, despite his lobbying of the state Legislature to require compensation to the districts.
While Trump is being asked to help out by contributing to the local school and fire districts, no state parks concessionaires currently pay local taxes, under the assumption that the revenue helps the park system, said Eileen Larrabee, spokeswoman for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.
Though the contract has been signed, it includes provisions for state oversight, which have been exercised by Carol Ash, the new state parks commissioner under Gov. Spitzer, said Larrabee.
Controversy also surrounds Trump’s partner Steven Carl. In 2001, the state comptroller’s office criticized Carl for not paying fees to the state and for underreporting revenue at Carlyle on the Green in Bethpage State Park. The comptroller determined that Carl had made significant improvements by 2004, but a former business partner of Carl’s alleged in a suit that the developer used the facility to play a “shell game” to hide income from the state. Carl countered that the comptroller’s findings were politically motivated and that his former partner obviously had a motive to discredit him. The suit was settled out of court.
Trump’s partnership with Carl came about by happenstance. After the state demolished the Boardwalk Restaurant, it sought proposals for replacements and received two responses, one from the Riese Organization, the other from Carl.
Carl had a vision, and of course, his name would also be incorporated into the new venture: Carlyle on the Ocean. But he had no developer. Then he met Trump, and the two partnered up. Guess whose name ended up on the marquee.
