from the National Post...
The ultimate crash pad: Trump Tower
Scaling the heights of elegance--and flamboyance
Olivia Stren, National Post
Published: Saturday, October 11, 2008
Toronto and Donald Trump don't make for obvious bedfellows. Toronto, chronically freighted with an insecurity complex, is as discreet and self-effacing as Trump is self-promoting and flashy. If Toronto is, at least stereotypically, prone to modesty and understatement, the mega-mogul is more partial to the superlative. About his $500-million Trump International Hotel and Tower at the corner of Bay and Adelaide, the tycoon pronounced with signature subtlety: "It's going to be the most elegant building there is. The highest-quality fixtures. The largest rooms. The largest ceiling heights. The highest of everything. There won't be a building to compete with it."
Destined to be the sexy Massif Central of the financial core, the slender 60 storey granite-and-glass-clad building comes courtesy of Eberhard Zeidler and Zeidler Partnership Architects, and has been designed with trademark Trumpian flash. The grand, spire-topped tower, slated for completion in 2010, is being promoted as the most luxurious residential building in Canada, featuring 118 luxed-out residential suites, and 261 hotel suites.
"The Trump brand borders flamboyance and elegance," offers Val Levitan, president and CEO of Talon International Development, the building's developer, as he settles comfortably in a club chair at Toronto's National Club, a capital of steak-eating and backslapping, where the rich colour scheme tends toward masculine shades of tobacco, wine and cognac. Mr. Levitan, who moved to Toronto from Minsk 28 years ago, continues as he smoothes his bold orange tie: "Trump is suited to an urban, business environment. If I were closing an important deal, I'd like to have a beautiful dinner at the restaurant, then have a deal-signing ceremony in the penthouse Presidential Expo Suite. This will be a hotel for deal-signing and deal-closing." The hotel's rooms will occupy the first 30 floors, while the spacious residential condos (starting at $1.8-million) will cosset owners with soaring 10-to 13-foot coffered ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, great rooms, foyers, terraces, libraries, and private service elevators that will escort caterers, dog-walkers, masseurs and other staff, unseen.
"Our vision was to build a slim tower in the city's busiest intersection. From the outside, it would resemble a commercial building, but inside it would have all the fine finishes of a hotel and residence," continues Mr. Levitan, "it's a flamboyant building, which is good: Flamboyance shows off achievement and beauty."
Trump's real-life apprentice, Donald Trump Jr., the Trump Organization's executive vice-president of development and acquisitions, arrives to join us. He has all the requisite suavity and dash of a young financier and all the hand-pumping bluster of a corporate-shooter-in-training. But he is also disarmingly friendly and casual and seems to have a great deal more humility (and hair!) than his father. Following the photographer's directions, he poses in front of a massive gilt-framed mirror, the sort you'd expect to find in a cobwebbed fairy-tale castle (or in any Trump manor). Still following orders, Trump Jr. gazes at himself, but does so a bit awkwardly and self-consciously, the prince who might not care to be king: "The headline's going to be about my ego, since I'm standing in front of this mirror," he laughs, with a measure of self-deprecation that is clearly not hereditary. (Trump senior is known for his self-deprecation about as much as the Dalai Lama is known for his histrionics and temper tantrums.)
Borrowing from his father's affection for the hyperbolic, Trump Jr. pronounces: "This building will redefine the epicentre of luxury living in Toronto. It's an incredible location on an incredibly tight site." (Indeed, the soaring property is being built on a relatively tiny 15,000 sq. ft. lot, and boasts the biggest height-to-land-area ratio in North America.) And despite Toronto's general discomfort with the over-the-top, Trump Jr. thinks the city's wealthiest have a hunger for excess: "This project is for the top, top demographic. And the highest-end buyer in the city does want glitz. And we will delivery luxury that is boutique in nature with all the best aspects of service, in a contextual envelope," he says, insisting that a good hotel should reflect its city. "I don't like being in a hotel lobby and feeling like I could be anywhere in the world."
As with all highest-tier projects, this one is attracting the international clientele; so far, 35% of takers hail from the U. K. And given the current economic climate in the U. S., the Trump Organization is happy to be colonizing Canada: "Toronto is probably one of the most stable places in the world to invest right now. There's a strong energy sector and a relatively stable economy," he says, "and a strong dollar. I used to have a Canadian girlfriend and used to call the loonie funny money. Which is not the case any more." Poised to serve as the ultimate crash pad for the world's deepest pockets, the building is also fashioned to stand out as the skyline's newest head-turner; a cloud-tickling spire at the building's glinting peak will rise above, and -- forgive me! -- trump the competition.
