Retailers fled. Trump's landmark tower is now a cheap, empty, closed-off New York embarrassment

[babylonsister]

Retailers fled. Trump's landmark tower is now a cheap, empty, closed-off New York embarrassment
Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 8:32:44p EDT
TheCriticalMind

snip//

The chief retail tenant is the Trump Store — where you can buy his second-rate branded merchandise at a premium. How about a scented candle for $48? Mother’s Day is in two weeks. No? Wise choice. For less expensive schlock, you can go to the Trump gift shop. Which, for some reason, features campaign merch from 2020 — and looks like it would be at home in a train station.


However, you can no longer patronize Ivanka’s jewelry store. She bailed in 2017.

The facility itself is a shadow of its past glory. The Trump Organization website hyperventilates: “One of the most notable features of Trump Tower is the breath-taking 60-foot waterfall embellishing the eastern wall of the building.” Sadly, the building has turned the water off. So you must use your imagination while staring at a tall wall.


As part of a deal with the City in which Trump was allowed to increase the building's square footage, he included two public terraces. They are now closed to the public. The smaller, still visible interior space is straggly and untended. The large glass doors that once opened onto the second, grander terrace are now mirrored over and locked.


more...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/4/27/2237689/-Retailers-fled-Trump-s-landmark-tower-is-now-a-cheap-empty-closed-off-New-York-embarrassment

[NameAlreadyTaken]

1. Sad!

[wolfie001]

32. Here, you forgot this:

[Hugin]

2. What caught my eye...

Is the “Plasma Virus Cleaner” in the lower left corner of the gift shop photo.

…



The empty place is a metaphor of it’s namesake.

[marble falls]

3. Yeah, that got me, too. Plasma as superheated gas or plasma as blood component? Or both. Fun for kids of all ages.

[Hugin]

4. I'm guessing it's one of those science kits for kids...

Like an ant farm. Except you raise the sea monkeys in your own plasma?



(Yes, folks, this is a joke and . Do not try at home.)

[yardwork]

9. I saw that too!

[benfranklin1776]

21. Indeed

I’m sure the gift shop sells Russian flags and Putin bobble heads for its preferred, i.e., traitorous America hating, private clientele.

It is as you describe, a rancid, fetid Potemkin Village, emblematic of the soulless, vacuous and fraudulent essence of the sociopath for who it is named. After Attorney General James seizes it, it ought to be converted to affordable housing to rectify the odious racial and socioeconomic discrimination he and his Klansman father perpetrated in their real estate dealings lo these many years.

[Celerity]

42. Plabank Plasma Virus Cleaners

I will not post a link.......



Introducing the Plasma Virus Cleaner, a device invented during the pandemic to reduce concentrations of viruses, bacteria, and fungi creating a clean indoor & outdoor environment.

Recent research has shown that the same plasma that exists in the ozone layer from the sun can be an effective deterrent against airborne pathogens.

By utilizing the natural oxygen and nitrogen that we breathe in our atmosphere, the Plasma Virus Cleaner releases active plasma particles to help eliminate pathogens.

With safety in mind, this product produces a safe green ozone of 0.03 PPM which complies with the US ozone emission safety standard for household products (≤ 0.05 PPM).

snip

[Hugin]

46. Seriously, thanks for doing the footwork on this...

Celerity.

I've seen similar air purifiers.

I was talking with one of my friends, who's an asthmatic, about the charged air purifiers some years ago. She told me they weren't recommended for those who suffer from asthma due to the fact that the ozone and other charged particles they emit into the air can actually complicate asthma. It's better to only have a filtration system.

I never looked into it to see if that were true, but it made sense to me that it would.

[mucifer]

5. when trump can cash in for a billion and a half dollars for his shady truth social, none of

this matters.

All that matters is he continues to get dark money.

[wolfie001]

33. He milked that like it was Devin Nunes' cow

Moo!!!!

[musclecar6]

6. Perfect

Epitaph for that 2 bit con man, liar and a cheat. He's what he's always been, a laughing stock national disgrace, with all his fake grandiose goldplated bullshit. Just an evil clown.

[brooklynite]

7. I'll argue that it was only the Trump brand that made the building successful in the first place.

New Yorkers hate the urban mall concept. We don't go inside buildings to find stores and restaurants. The Trump Tower appeal was largely built around tourists who knew Trump from THE APPRENTICE and his other branded products.

[Ocelot II]

10. The urban mall was invented in Minnesota in 1956. It was created out of necessity

because of the weather here (or at least as it was until recently). If you're not up to your ass in snow five months of the year you don't have to go inside a building to find shops and restaurants. NYC isn't the sort of city that would want to waste horizontal real estate on the vast expanse of a mall anyhow.

[yardwork]

11. I walked into the lobby in 1985 or so.

It was considered tacky and ridiculous at the time.

[KentuckyWoman]

24. Robin Leach gave us a tour

I remember an hour long show where Mr. Yell himself took us all on the grand tour. Even by 80s standards it was tacky - and that's saying something.

[PatSeg]

29. And that pretty much sums up anything

Trump related, as well as Trump himself - "tacky and ridiculous".

[yardwork]

31. Yeah. He's been that way from the beginning.

[PatSeg]

36. Yes and the whole world knew it

except apparently his MAGA base, unless of course "tacky and ridiculous" are what they aspire to be.

[MiHale]

8. As vacuous looking and broken as the 'man' it's named for.

[Tickle]

12. Where did the retailers go

when they fled?

[NanaCat]

26. To...other buildings?

Just a guess.

Any increase in retail leasing would be worth it to have customers who refused to set foot in Traitor Tower.

Win.

Win.

[jaxexpat]

13. There will be much celebration and fanfare when it's torn down. Sooner rather than later, I think.

[Mossfern]

14. It's tragic

that the building can't be rebuilt to the beautiful Art Deco aesthetic that it once was.
It needs to be torn down because it's a reminder of greed and corruption and lack of taste.

Who needs a monument to that?


On edit: My mom used to take me to Bonwit Teller occasionally, just as a treat.

[orleans]

20. how was bonwit teller a treat? (basically i know nothing about bonwit teller so...) nt

[Ocelot II]

22. It was a high-end department store - very elegant.

It would have been quite a treat to go there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonwit_Teller

[Mossfern]

35. It was "old fashioned" customer service - beautiful displays

A very serene and understated elegant atmosphere with a sense of history.
Merchandise that was not run of the mill -unique. Quiet - no blaring music.
Mom would buy me one outfit a year.

As a young woman, I would splurge and buy myself 100% silk and fine lace tap pant and camisole sets. They were sexy in a classic sort of way.

[orleans]

40. thanks for the description-- kind of makes me wish i was more familiar with the store. apparently

there was one located in the western burbs of chicago (at a mall). i remember going to the mall once in awhile but i don't recall ever going into that particular store.

oh well. apparently it was my loss.

[Botany]

23. Gold plated crap is still crap.

[BigmanPigman]

45. The Bonwit Teller doors made me remember this....

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/donald-trump-bonwit-teller-friezes-met-2132673

He lied, called himself John Barron, etc. Turns out he ordered them demolished himself.

I remember Keith Olbermann got pissed off over this.

[NBachers]

15. They're right- New York is being denied access to the "Public Spaces," and that's another violation of many.

Whatever City Department is in charge of this should land on it with both feet.

[AllaN01Bear]

16. turn it into lo income , seinior and homless shelter rather than tear it down.

[Bayard]

27. What a great idea!

What would the new name be?

[2naSalit]

17. Everything he touches...

Place looks like a shithole.

[orleans]

18. i'm wondering about the people who are living in the building

how they feel about the run down state the building seems to be in

do they want to stay? or move out?

does trumpie stay there when he's in nyc?

[leftieNanner]

25. Keith Olbermann used to own a condo there

He sold it almost immediately in 2017. Goo call Keith!

[Botany]

19. Let me see if I have this right? Donny is in his own hell.

Donny no longer owns the building because he has borrowed against it, the retail tenants have fled, his own daughter got out of the building and closed her store in 2017 when her daddy was President, the water has been turned off in sections (unpaid bills is my guess), large areas and the doors are no longer open to the public, and almost every week day for the next month and 1/2 Donny will have to sit in his
own shit in a Manhattan courtroom as the evidence of his crimes is put out for the world to see.
And very shortly Tish James will file a lien on the building.

[yardwork]

34. Sounds about right.

Plus, speaking of hells of his own making, nobody in Trump's family comes to court to support him. His daughter, having used his presidency to further enrich herself and her husband, appears to have abandoned him. He's probably wondering when his older sons will turn on him to save their own sorry asses. His wife - if you can call her that - seems to have built a wall around herself and her son - I'm sure she's just waiting for him to die. He has at least one other daughter but he rejected her long ago.

Trump is a lonely, mean, crazy old man who drove everybody in his family away. All he has are his adoring crowds and his MAGAT-Russian-Chinese handlers, who want to somehow drag him across the finish line again so they can use him as their puppet for four more years.

[Botany]

37. I'm going for the end of June or early July when Donny either flees the country or drops dead.

By that time he will be found guilty on a # of felony counts in his current trial in Manhattan,
the State of New York should have started seizing his property and assets, and Fani Willis
might have started the trial in Georgia in which many of the phony electors will have flipped
against Trump because they don’t want to do the 5 years (4 years with good behavior) on RICO
charges. Also several U.S. Capitol Police Officers are getting ready to sue Trump for Jan. 6th
too so he is facing financial ruin from that along with the $80 million to Ms. E Jean Carroll.

I don’t think Trump wanted to run for President but Vlad Putin had the dirt on him so he did
and now (much later than it should have been) the chickens have come home to roost.

Fuck him. The world has 14 million dead from C-19 in a large thanx to Trump.

[mopinko]

38. i think it wd b a bad choice to seize. it's got to have the worst value/sq ft.

it probably loses money at this point. she’ll find stuff he still owns a piece of, but has removed his name.

[FakeNoose]

43. The only thing he owns in the Chump Tower is his own condo

... which takes up 3 floors of the high-rise building.

He was (and I believe he still is) under contract to "manage" the Chump Tower unless something has changed recently. While Chump was off doing his thing in DC, he appointed his sons to manage it, but I'm not sure how that worked out. As someone mentioned earlier, Ivanka had one of the retail stores but she changed careers when Daddy became the Prez.

Just like every other Chump property we know of, it has turned to shit because he can't manage anything. And that's exactly what he plans to do to the country.

[Hekate]

28. Love the last 2 paragraphs...

Trump Tower was always ugly. The exterior design is derivative and boring. The public spaces were designed to appeal to an unimaginative and esthetically challenged, outer-borough boy with the taste of an Albanian crime boss.

The only people who would appreciate it are people who cannot afford to live there. Although, if they wait for a second, the desperate owners of Trump Tower apartments may soon take ‘any reasonable offer’.

OTT, what an utter waste of resources, decaying before our eyes — a metaphor for the man himself.

[PatSeg]

30. "Everything Trump touches........"

This building is going the way of his failed casinos. All cheap glitter and no substance. What a truly pathetic little man.

[Journeyman]

39. The framed commemorative picture in the lower right is a hoot . . .

"The President." Yet the image behind him is the Capitol building, while his picture looks like something from 40 years ago.

[keithbvadu2]

41. An example of Donald's business success.

[IcyPeas]

44. Does Melania still have her own apartment on the 33rd floor?