Condo Board Victory Is Latest Setback for the Trump Brand

The Trump presidency has certainly been good for the legal profession. At a time when the president’s personal lawyer has his own team of lawyers, and the president’s high-dollar lawyers include a former New York City mayor and a former defender of President Bill Clinton, a New York City courtroom has proven richly rewarding for lawyers representing the Trump Organization and lawyers representing the board of the Trump Place condominium on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 

In a drawn-out legal battle, state supreme court Judge Eileen Bransten ruled Thursday that the 46-story condo board has the right to remove the president’s name from its facade, the New York Times reports. The ruling opens the way for the 377 unit-owners at 200 Riverside Boulevard to formally vote on a question that numerous other properties have considered: should the T-word should stay, or should it go? A two-thirds supermajority is required to remove the bronze signage that has been in place for the past 19 years. 

Judge Bransten ruled that a four-page licensing agreement, worth $1, gave the Trump Place condo board permission to use the Trump name, but did not require its use. If the Trump name comes down from 200 Riverside Boulevard, it will merely be the latest in a growing list of rebukes to the president’s real-estate brand. 

Condo owners at the Trump Parc in Stamford, Connecticut, are considering de-Trumping. The silver T-R-U-M-P letters were pried off a troubled hotel and residential condominium in Panama City earlier this year. The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto was renamed the Adelaide. The Trump name was recently taken off the Trump Soho, a troubled condo-hotel in Manhattan where the president’s children, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump, were accused of lying to potential buyers – but never charged. And three rental apartment buildings just south of 200 Riverside have excised the Trump name from the buildings. 

Outside the courthouse on Thursday, Harry Lipman, a lawyer for the Trump Place condo board, said, “We’re pleased, obviously.” A lot of his fellow lawyers are saying the same thing these days.