By:  Benyamin Davidsons

When it was built, some four decades ago, the Trump Tower mall, at 725 Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, made quite the splash. The 58-story, 664-foot-tall, mixed-use development, centrally located between East 56th and 57th Streets, was opened in 1983, to include luxury condominiums with a retail base and some office space.  It features privately  owned public space on the ground floor, lower level, and two outdoor terraces on the fourth and fifth floors. The tower, famed for its luxe pink white-veined marble walls and a 60-foot-tall indoor waterfall,  quickly became a posh shopping destination and a tourist hotspot.

The rare five-story atrium, spanning 140,000-square-feet, had big name shops and cafes as tenants. The tower features offices on the next few floors, and then 263 condo apartments throughout  the rest of the skyscraper.  Per Crain’s NY, at its peak, there were close to five dozen high-end retail storefronts, with some of the tenants paying up to $500 per square foot annually in rent, setting a record, per news reports from the time.

Brand name tenants included Harry Winston, Asprey and Lina Lee, Charles Jourdan and Footloose. Italian fashion retailer Gucci was the skyscraper’s biggest commercial tenant, renting 48,667 square feet along Fifth Avenue since 2007.  The designer had at first been shelling out some $18.7 million in rent a year to Trump, per Crain’s report on a 2012 stock filing.  The mall was 99% occupied  by 21 tenants at the time, though some of the store were occupied by Trump-linked stores even then.

Then came Donald Trump’s controversial 2016 presidential election, and a lot of the tenants bolted. The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which had been the third largest tenant and whose rent was $1.9 million a year, downsized its 20,000-square-foot space in 2019, and left the building altogether in 2021. The NikeTown store, whose lease ran through 2022, closed its store in 2018 and relocated  along Fifth Avenue, reportedly in opposition to Trump’s presidency.  Today, Gucci is one of the last big-name retailers left at the Trump Tower mall.  A lot of the current retail spots are occupied by the landlord, with rent-free storefronts like Trump Sweets.

Gucci stayed on, renegotiating its lease in 2020, and received a reduction in rent for agreeing to extend the lease beyond 2026.

So, imagine how last month’s blockbuster deal must have irked the owners of Trump Tower.  In the deal, the storefront at 717 Fifth, was purchased  by Gucci owner, Kering, for a whopping $963 million from Jeff Sutton’s Wharton Properties, as reported by Crain’s NY.  The transaction was lauded by almost everyone as a boost to Midtown.

Neighboring Trump Towers, however, may have been less enthused, mulling  over whether this means that Kering will relocate Gucci to its new property, instead of continuing to pay millions annually for the three-story space on the same block.  Brokers are already talking about the impact such a move would have on Trump Tower mall, which is already comparatively empty.

“There are challenges to being in Trump Tower, and I think it would be difficult to replace Gucci if Trump were re-elected,” said Robin Abrams, a vice chairman at Compass specializing in retail deals. “Maybe they could find a brand that is aligned with them politically. But if I was a retailer looking for a flagship location, Trump Tower probably wouldn’t be it.”