Trump Palace Nearing Completion

By Jennifer LeClaire

Donald Trump is as busy as ever redefining metropolitan skylines with luxurious, high-rise condominium projects.

As Tampa Bay-area developers prepare to break ground in April on the next Trump Tower - a $220 million, 52-story, condo project in downtown Tampa that will be the tallest residential building on Florida's Gulf Coast - contractors are still putting the finishing touches on Trump Palace in Sunny Isles Beach.

Trump's Palace, a 278-unit, 55-story residential condominium with residences that are to range from 1,197 to 6,300 sq. ft. and from $500,000 to $5 million per unit, is scheduled to open its doors to homeowners in August.

Trump Palace is part of a $700 million, 11-acre, three-building oceanfront project that marked Trump's first foray into the South Florida residential real estate market. The Trump International Sonesta Beach Resort opened last year, and the Trump Royale, a 391-unit, 55-story residential condo, will come online in 2007.

To build the grand complex, father and son developer duo Michael and Gil Dezer partnered with Trump three years ago and teamed up with Miami-based architectural firm Sieger-Suarez Architectural Partnership, award-winning designers of projects such as South Beach's Portofino Tower and Las Vegas' Park Towers.

"Our highest priority was to create an urban environment every bit as spectacular as the finished product," Gil Dezer said. "We wanted buyers to know from the outset that the development would be different than the typical condominium in South Florida."

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Constructing a condo behemoth

To make sure buyers got what they bargained for, Trump Dezer Development hired Fort Lauderdale-based Coscan Construction, the construction arm of Coscan Homes, to build the Palace. Coscan Homes has developed Ocean Point in Sunny Isles Beach and the South Tower at The Point of Aventura, among other projects.

Mike Neal, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Coscan Construction, said even though his firm has built a dozen high-rise condominiums in the past decade, working on Trump Palace has been an enlightening experience.

While every high-rise condo has similar components and characteristics, Neal's crew had never before worked on such a tall building. Indeed, the Trump projects are among a handful in South Florida that has reached that height.

"The height of the project has a pretty dramatic impact on the engineering and construction," he said. "The foundations are huge and dealing with settlement issues on a 55-story building is much different than a 15-story building. You would be surprised at how buildings behave when they are that tall."

Florida Concrete Unlimited of Miami began preparing a blueprint of the site, drawn to scale, two months prior to pouring the 9,000-yd. concrete mat slab in October 2002. The project consumed 1,000 truckloads of concrete. Neal said having the right concrete-forming contractor, the right reinforcing-steel contractor and the best construction trades was critical.

"The size of the columns and the shear walls are just enormous," he added. "Some of them are 5 ft. thick. Because of the height and weight of the building, everything is bigger. It took a lot of collaboration with the structural engineer and the architect to make sure that what was drawn on paper was interpreted in a way that would work in practice."

A vision for luxury

Another big task is meeting the quality and design standards of the Trump brand, Neal said. The Palace has an oval-shaped 48- by 48-ft. Omni Hub space frame that acts as the signature structure entranceway for the condo tower.

"The lobby of this building and its interior finishes are phenomenal," Neal added. "They are very rich and luxurious. The architecture is not your typical rectilinear style. It has lots of elliptical shapes that carry from the bottom all the way to the top."

The space frame has a low profile that is almost flat with translucent blue glass cladding. Two aluminum columns and four anchor points to an existing concrete beam support the canopy. Other elements include a waveform entranceway and a guardhouse to create a similar Omni Hub signature.

Private, high-speed elevators leading to residence entrance galleries with handcrafted coffered ceilings and solid-wood double doors are also part of the luxurious project. The individual condo units have 10-ft. ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. Spacious outdoor terraces accompany all units and are accessible from master suites with a panoramic ocean and Intracoastal Waterway view.

"We are not building a budget hotel here," Neal said. "We work with a tight-knit group that understands the risks involved in not building a condominium properly. We understand the expectation of quality. Folks who are paying in excess of $1 million for a unit aren't going to accept average quality."

Topping off the project

Coscan Construction topped off the project in November. The crew is still working on the parking garage, the pool deck area and the lobby. Neal said the team has finished units up through the 35th floor.

Not all of the challenged were structural. Neal said it takes time - and plenty of it - to get the materials and the construction workers from the bottom to the top of the building.

"Riding materials up to the 50th floor on a hoist takes several minutes," he added. "And when lunchtime comes, you can't have everybody coming in and out of the building because that would take two hours. So the efficiency of getting the manpower and the materials to the top of a high-rise like this can be a slow cycle. We have lunches brought up to the top of the building every day so the guys don't have to come down."