Should luxury brands cut ties with ‘radioactive’ Donald Trump? How Gucci, Tiffany & Co. and even the PGA are weighing up their future business relationships with the former US president
Luxury fashion retailer Gucci won’t be leaving Manhattan’s Trump Tower any time soon.
That’s according to a report in the The New York Times detailing a deal from 2020 in which Gucci, Trump Tower’s biggest commercial tenant, renegotiated and extended its lease in the building at 721-725 Fifth Avenue. The paper cited two people with knowledge of the deal.
The 20-year lease the company took in 2006 was due to expire in 2026. Gucci got a reduction in rent after agreeing to expand its lease beyond this date, the sources said.
Gucci declined to comment to the Times, and The Trump Organization did not respond to the paper’s request for comment. Gucci had asked the Trump Organization to sign confidentiality agreements regarding the terms of the lease, one person who had seen the lease told the publication.
The Trump Organization and Gucci’s parent company, Kering, were contacted for comment.
Other companies are scrambling to cut ties with the former president.
Gucci leases a nearly 50,000 sq ft space spread over five floors of Trump Tower. This is around 20 per cent of the tower’s total rental space.
In 2012, the fashion brand was paying US$18.7 million in annual rent for the space at a rate of US$384.40 per square foot, an SEC filing shows. This made it by far the tower’s biggest rent payer, contributing nearly two-thirds of the building’s annual rental income.
The city of New York is also ending its business contracts with the Trump Organization, which had managed a golf course in the Bronx as well as two ice skating rinks and the carousel in Central Park, for a combined annual revenue of around US$17 million.
Trump-branded Manhattan buildings have lost more than 20 per cent of their value since he first took office.
“The Trump name is probably pretty radioactive right now,” property agent Mark Cohen said.
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This article originally appeared on Business Insider
- Several major companies are scrambling to distance themselves from The Trump Organization, Trump-branded buildings and Trump’s relatives like Jared Kushner
- Tiffany and Co. is moving out of its Trump-owned Manhattan HQ and the PGA of America has pulled its 2022 championship from Trump’s New Jersey golf course