Trump Tower Delayed

Work on the Trump International Hotel and Tower on Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, has been stopped and the project delayed indefinitely. Nakheel, the Dubai-government owned developer, announced the delay on this and several other flagship projects on Sunday.

The company issued a statement, saying,

Nakheel is delaying long-dated infrastructure work on some of our projects in order to ensure that our business model is aligned to meet market demand. We have the responsibility to adjust our short term business plans to accommodate the current global environment.

Frond N villas, Gateway Towers and The Universe, will also be delayed indefinitely, although I was not aware that The Universe was a serious proposal.

Other projects that are planned to continue include Madinat Al Arab, Venetto, Badra, the Canal District, The World and Palm Deira, although some of these will be scaled back and the dredging work on Palm Deira has also been slowed. Nakheel also announced it is cutting 15% of it’s workforce and has already laid off 500 employees. This comes after similar announcements by other luxury developers in the region, including Damac Holding, Omniyat and Tameer Holding Investment, all of whom are shedding staff. Tameer has already fired 50% of their workforce, and it is unlikely that job losses at Nakheel will be held at 15%.

The Trump International Hotel and Tower was announced in 2005 to much hoopla, and is a joint venture between The Trump organization and Nakheel. The original proposal was for a 62-storey, stainless steel and glass Tower with 300 rooms at an estimated cost of $600 million. The tagline, “Believing is Seeing,” may, in hindsight, have been a poor choice.

Seeing is Believing

Just exactly what level of interest The Trump organization has in the project is unclear, but Mr. Trump recently filed a lawsuit against the lenders of a sister project, The Chicago Trump International Hotel and Tower, asking for more time to repay the $640 million construction loan. Mr. Trump is attempting to invoke a clause normally reserved for acts of war and natural disasters, that would extend the loan. Trump is also claiming $3 billion in damages, because of the “unprecedented financial crisis in the credit markets now prevailing, in part due to acts Deutsche Bank itself participated in.” Deutsche Bank being one of the lenders in question. One has to admire Mr. Trump’s gumption, and a fuller explanation of the rather complex nature of the lawsuit is here - Wall Street Journal. The words “delaying tactic,” come to mind after reading the basis for the suit, and in the unlikely event of being sucessful would open up all sorts of cans of worms as to who could be held responsible for the current credit crisis and who owes what to whom. In fact, the construction loan has been so tortuously broken up, re-lent and re-leveraged, it is unclear who actually owns it. Mr. Trump needs to watch out he doesn’t discover he owns it himself………

Issues with these two projects also casts doubt on the likelihood of Trump’s proposed golf course development in Scotland proceeding as planned, which will bring much joy to it’s opponents, many of whom objected on environmental grounds.

This week’s worst youtube real estate video is courtesy of The Sri Lankan Lion. Yet another horrible slide show purporting to sell luxury homes in Sri Lanka.

Quite apart from the horrible slide show, this one demonstrates an extremely poor choice of background music. Unless you are marketing an MTV “crib,” to would-be rap music moguls, I would have thought that using rap music as a backdrop for luxury real estate videos was a big no-no. The opening words,

All a n***** really need is a little bit, not a lot b*** girl, just a little bit

were enough to persuade me I had this week’s winner. Segway into a variety of poor quality Indian and American rap music throughout. * shudder * . But maybe it is just me? Comments welcome.