Three Trump Place buildings at 140, 160, and 180 Riverside South on the Upper West Side will be scrubbed of the President-Elect’s moniker in the wake of a tenant petition to “Dump the Trump Name,” the Times reports. Equity Residential, who acquired the three buildings after they were developed and branded by The Donald, announced the change in an email, explaining it thusly: “The purpose of this change is to assume a neutral building identity that appeals to all current and future residents.”
“It's embarrassing to live in the building,” a resident of Trump Place told Brick Underground when the petition was just gaining steam. “I've had lots of friends make comments about it. My kids are so disgusted with Donald Trump that they find it viscerally uncomfortable to live in a building that has his name on it.”
When asked by the Times if the decision to remove Trump’s name from the building was connected to a fractured ability to lease apartments, Equity Residential’s vice president for investor and public relations Martin McKenna told the Gray Lady that he “[didn’t] have a comment on that.”
Stats pulled from New York City real estate website StreetEasy in late October corroborated that the name brand was losing prestige among buyers. Between the periods spanning October 2014 through October 2015, and November 2015 through October 2016, sales in Trump-owned buildings dipped a significant 26 percent. “Where that brand used to enhance value, it is now being perceived as a detraction to value,” Michael Vargas of Vanderbilt Appraisal Company said. “It’s a slowdown in the real estate market combined with a negative view of the brand.”
Meanwhile, just one of Manhattan’s multitude of election districts swung in favor of Donald Trump—the least of any borough—and it was won by merely one vote.
Loading comments...