Having already hosted Rudy Giuliani’s 75th birthday party in May, top Hamptons homebuilder Joe Farrell is getting ready to raise the Make America Great Again stakes at his East End estate.
Farrell’s 17,000-square-foot “Sandcastle” mansion in Bridgehampton, which hit the market last year seeking $50 million before slashing $10 million from its asking price in June, will be the scene of a fundraiser on Aug. 9 for President Donald Trump. Business Insider, citing data from Zillow’s Out East, noted this week that Farrell’s home is the most expensive summer rental in the Hamptons at $1 million per month.
CNBC reported Tuesday that tickets for the soiree start at $2,800 and go up to $250,000, with the premium price granting a potential contributor eight tickets to the event and two photos with the president. Trump and his Democratic rivals in the looming 2020 presidential race are preparing to ramp up their efforts on the donor circuit in order to raise funds for the campaign trail.
The Real Deal reported last week on some of the top real estate executives throughout the country donating to political candidates, including Trump, ahead of an election season they hope will further their business interests. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a senator from California, will reportedly have her own East End fundraiser on Aug. 18 in the Water Mill home of public relations executive Michael Kempner.
Farrell, whose “Farrellization” of the Hamptons through his cookie-cutter style McMansions has earned him the enmity of architectural critics, knows the president from being a member for the past 15 years at the Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, according to the New York Post.
The outlet noted that Trump will speak for about an hour at Farrell’s fundraiser, which will also be hosted by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and his girlfriend, former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle. The couple recently closed on their $4.4 million buy of a 9,200-square-foot Bridgehampton home.
Earlier this year, Farrell told the Post that he was riding the “Trump bump” in tapping Saunders & Associates to market a 19-property portfolio, including the Sandcastle, valued at $200 million. (Farrell Communities, an affiliate of Farrell’s Bridgehampton-based Farrell Building Company, secured $65 million in financing in February for a luxury rental project on Long Island.)
Vanity Fair, which earlier this month bemoaned a “MAGA invasion” of the high-society scene in the Hamptons, called the Sandcastle-centered event a fitting capper to what it termed a “brutal” summer season of Trump supporters partying throughout the affluent enclave.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller III testified Thursday that Trump could have been “exposed” due to discussions involving a member of his team and Russian officials over a Trump-branded condo tower in Moscow. [CNBC] — Brian Baxter