He Opens Club in Spare Rooms
DONALD TRUMP plans to open his 118-room Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, this week as a club for such honorary members as Prince Charles and others flush enough to pay an initiation fee of $100,000 each.
Trump, the deal-maker extraordinaire who has been bouncing back from the brink of bankruptcy, has turned his 65,000-square-foot-plus home on nearly 18 acres into a facility for 500 members. A dozen of the 250 already signed up are honorary, like the prince, Trump said.
Mar-a-Lago, on nearly 18 acres between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth, was built for cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her then-husband, stockbroker E. F. Hutton, in 1927 at a cost of about $2 million. “It was built to last,” said appraiser Roger Finch of Callaway & Price, West Palm Beach. “It is the only house I know in Palm Beach that has its original roof.”
To turn the house into a club, Trump, who bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985 after Post’s death, had to install a fire sprinkler system, even in the hand-gilded, 34-foot-high living room ceiling. “It was a delicate job,” he said. “All 118 rooms in the house were sprinklered.”
Of the 52 bedrooms in the estate, Trump converted 35 into suites for club members. He built a 900-foot-long wall for privacy and security, and he’s creating a 25,000-square-foot spa in the three bomb shelters. “It will be done early next season,” he said.
Trump paid $10 million, including furnishings, for the Hispano-Mooresque house and its 75-foot-tall bell tower; nine-hole golf course; ballroom with a balcony where Post unobtrusively watched her guests, and tunnel to the beach. Trump estimates that he has spent $15 million in renovations.
“The club is not a huge deal compared to my others, but it’s the most important to me in terms of preserving a historic landmark,” he said, describing Mar-a-Lago as “No. 1 among the three great houses of America,” which he says include San Simeon in California and the Breakers in Rhode Island.
“I own 100% of Mar-a-Lago,” he said. “It’s my house, and I live in a certain section of it. That won’t change. But it costs $3 million a year to maintain. This way, if I’m no longer around and there is nobody else to take my place to preserve Mar-a-Lago, it will be automatically sustained by the club.”
A Miami house used by gangster AL CAPONE for parties when he was king of the underworld is on the market at just under $2.7 million.
“Al Capone had a home for his family and a home for his parties,” said Ronald Shuffield, president of Esslinger/Wooten/Maxwell, Realtors in Coral Gables. The two homes were just a few houses apart on Palm Island. Capone died of syphilis at his family home in Miami in 1947.
Built in 1924, his party house, owned and restored by listing agent Maria Pou and her husband, has nine bedrooms in 7,000 square feet. It’s on an acre with 250 feet on Biscayne Bay.
“Cher was interested when we first listed our house two years ago, but she decided that she wanted a more modern home,” said Pou, of Wimbish Realty, Miami Beach. Cher bought a Miami home for $1.5 million and recently submitted plans to the city to expand the house to 14,000 square feet.
Billionaire JOHN KLUGE, chief executive of the Metromedia Co., bought a Palm Beach house for $4 million earlier this year and paid another $1 million for the crystal and china.
Now Kluge, who is refurbishing the house, is expecting to close escrow in May on a house next door for $4.5 million to tear down so he can have a garden, a source said. Kluge is also said to be buying another house next door for $1.3 million. Kluge has a 60-acre estate in Virginia.
A ruling on whether or not THE KENNEDYS’ Palm Beach home of 62 years will be declared a historic landmark is expected to be issued after a preservation commission meeting April 19.
“The town has been trying to give it landmark status, and we and the family don’t want that, because it would make it harder to sell,” said listing agent Ned Monell of Sotheby’s International Realty. The 10,000-square-foot, 14-bedroom house is for sale at $7 million.
Landmark status requires owners to seek city approval for changing exteriors, not interiors. “So it’s not the kiss of death it’s made out to be, but it effectively narrows the field of potential candidates for buying the property, because of a perceived notion that it is difficult to do what you want,” Monell said.
