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SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2007 | NASSAU EDITION

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TRUMP AND JONES BEACH

Dine For
Proposed restaurant is loaded with perks for developer, caterer
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A Deal To

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A DEAL TO DINE FOR

State gives Trump

A new look
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Trump on the Ocean, set to break ground this spring and be completed late next year, will dwarf any previous eating and entertainment facility built at Jones Beach State Park.
1 CATERING HALL / RESTAURANT

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Immense facility would provide a year-round venue for weddings and formal parties, while a restaurant would give patrons a grand view of the Atlantic. Developers tout the restaurants set-back design as unobtrusive; critics say the facilitys sheer scale would ruin the aesthetics of the beach.

2 EXPANDED PARKING
To make room for 252 on-site spots, an adjacent 18-hole golf course, which is in need of repair, would be moved over and renovated.

3 TRUMP SIGNS
The lease allows developers to build 71/2-foot-tall signs on the site and other smaller signs along the parkway to guide motorists. In the past, commercial signage has been restricted at the park.
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Suffolk

Jones Beach State Park

Donald Trump and Steve Carl Steven Carl

NEWSDAY PHOTO / MOISES SAMAN

Sweet deal
Real estate scion Donald Trump and his business partner Steven Carl are paying the lowest lease rate of any licensee doing business in a state park. The term, 40 years, is so long it required legislative action to approve. Facility
Bethpage State Park Saratoga Spa Niagara Falls Jones Beach & Robert Moses parks* Jones Beach, Robert Moses & Captree parks** Trump on the Ocean
*Concession stands **Concession stands, restaurants
SOURCES: TRUMP ON THE OCEAN; STATE OFFICE OF PARKS, RECREATION AND HISTORIC PRESERVATION

NEWSDAY, SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2007

Licensee
Carlyle on the Green Xanterra Parks & Resorts Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts J&B Restaurant Partners Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts Trump on the Ocean LLC

Term, in years Sales (2006)

20 20 20 10 6 40 $10.1 million $9.5 million $5.8 million $4 million $3.7 million ('03) N/A

% of sales paid to state annually

10.25% 6% 9% food; 15% retail 15% 10% restaurant; 15% concession stands $200,000 plus 0-5%
Base rent adjusted for inflation annually

JONES BEACH RESTAURANT

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a day at the beach

Then and now
Trump and Carls project will be the third dining establishment at Jones Beach. A history:

The Donald and partner win what looks like the most generous terms granted by NY in a parks contract since the days of Robert Moses
BY ELIZABETH MOORE
elizabeth.moore@newsday.com

1936
BURNED 1964
Building size 19,363 square feet Height from boardwalk 15 7 (Tower 29) Site size 105,000 square feet Parking spaces Unknown

1968
DEMOLISHED 2004
Building size 49,800 square feet Height from boardwalk 21 9 Site size 125,023 square feet Parking spaces 168

2008
TRUMP ON THE OCEAN
Building size 70,000 square feet Height from boardwalk 28 along parking lot Site size 287,496 square feet Parking spaces 252 on site, 450 off site

He planned to call it Trump Palace on the Ocean. Bernadette Castro told him she didnt like that name. He saved its best ocean views for his $300-a-plate catering clients. The Spitzer administration has sent his architects back to the drawing board to let ordinary restaurant guests see the Atlantic, too. But Manhattan real estate mogul Donald Trump has negotiated what could be the most generous parks concession contract granted by the state of New York since the days of Robert Moses an unusual 40-year lease, lower lease payments, and borrowing power no other parks concessionaires are granted according to a Newsday analysis of state leases. Trump on the Ocean, for which ground will soon be broken at the site of Jones Beach State Parks old Boardwalk Restaurant, will put the Trump brand on 7 1/2 foot monuments at the heart of the historic park Moses viewed as his greatest achievement. Trump and his partner, Long Island catering impresario Steven Carl, expect to do $1.5 billion in business over the 40-year term of the lease, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Law after the contract won final state approval in December. Former Gov. George Pataki lauded Trump on the Oceans array of unique dining opportunities for park patrons last fall, which will include both an informal terrace for al fresco meals and a more formal indoor dining room. But as a business proposition this would be first and foremost a catering hall, drawing 85 percent of its sales through weddings, bar and bat mitzvahs and corporate events after it opens late next year. Its indoor and outdoor restaurants will account for 5 percent, with 10 percent from a nightclub Trump and Carl plan to operate. 4 times bigger than original The state believes a restaurant cant survive financially on that windswept beach site unless it is combined with a yearround catering hall. Building plans show Trump on the Ocean will accomplish this by expanding to almost four times the size of Moses original 1936 structure, lost to a fire in 1964. You have to build a great building sometimes to do some-

thing great, Trump said in an interview Friday. Were doing a building that will be superior to anything in Jones Beach, old or new. There will be nothing like this in the United States. Though Trump on the Oceans architect Hawkins Webb Jaeger has worked closely with the state to design a stylistic echo of Moses original structure, preservation advocates now say they fear it will be simply too big, skewing the carefully balanced symmetry of a park that has just been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Its all just so anathema to this idea of this getaway thats about restorative activities, health and quiet recreation, said Alexandra Wolf, director of preservation services for the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, who wrote a letter of concern to acting parks commissioner Carol Ash last week. Ashs predecessor, Castro, who advocated for tapping the vitality of the business sector to strengthen public parks, considered Trump on the Ocean like a gift from God. State expects to make $74M Without risking a penny of taxpayer money, New York is presiding over a $25.5 million renewal of a central feature of Moses masterpiece, replacing a statebuilt 1968 modernist structure that few seem to remember fondly. Whats more, New York expects to get $74 million out of the deal over its 40-year duration, which it estimates would be about a quarter of Trump on the Oceans net profits, and the caterers also will set aside 3 percent of their revenues to pay for ongoing refurbishments. From the moment its built, the building will belong to the state. Earlier this month, Trump bet The Hair and won millions for charity in Detroit, when his handpicked fighter felled the Samoan Bulldozer before

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See BEACH on A38

View a photo gallery that captures the past, present and future of Trumps Jones Beach site at

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NEWSDAY / ROD EYER

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A DEAL TO DINE FOR

Trumps big day at beach

BEACH from A5
80,103 screaming Wrestlemania fans. Here on Long Island, he may have done better, judging from several unusual aspects of the contract: Trump on the Oceans 40-year lease term required special legislation. Only one other parks contract, the Maid of the Mist boat ride at Niagara Falls, has a term that long. Sponsors of the original bill, passed before Trump became involved, argued that a longer lease term at the Boardwalk Restaurant would attract bigger capital investment. Trump on the Ocean has the lowest lease payments, on a percentage basis, of any big state parks contract. For the first three years after opening, it will pay New York an annual base rent of $200,000, less than 1 percent of the $70 million Trump and Carl expect to bring in. In years 4 to 6, theyll pay the base rent plus 2 percent of sales, amounting to about 2.7 percent of the take; and for the rest of the first 25 years, the base rent and cut of revenues is projected to be 4.7 percent of sales. By comparison, Xanterra Parks and Resorts is paying 6 percent to run the Gideon Putnam Hotel in Saratoga Springs. Steven Carl pays 10.25 percent of his catering and restaurant revenues at Bethpage State Park and J&B Restaurant Partners pays 15 percent at its concession stands at Jones Beach and Robert Moses state parks. Park officials justify the lower payments by noting the high cost to build and run Trump on the Ocean and the lack of any guarantee on its revenues. Trump on the Ocean has been granted another privilege unique for the Parks Department: It can use its lease with the state as collateral for unlimited borrowing, to cover not just most of the construction cost, but also operating expenses, documents show. Trump projects expenses will total $1.2 billion over 40 years. The state comptroller wanted to limit their borrowing to the cost of construction, but Trump and Carl were adamant and prevailed. Leasehold mortgages are generally less palatable to governments because investors arent risking their own money and can too easily walk away from unsuccessful projects, said Carl needed bigger quarters. It would have to match or beat Long Islands high-end leviathan, the Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury, which holds 1,500 people or more. Jones Beach, he told the state, could handle that. So while the Boardwalk Restaurant had grossed an average of $1.6 million annually before being torn down, Carl projected revenues of almost 10 times that amount. Carlyle on the Ocean would be bigger, too: almost three times as tall as the main roofline of the original, and at 98,000 square feet, more than five times as large. Catering guests would arrive to valet parking and sweeping views over the Atlantic from a chandeliered ballroom upstairs. Restaurant goers, by contrast, would get a cozy room with a low ceiling downstairs, with a less dramatic vista. Carl said he was just testing the waters with this design. Coming just as the park was being added to the National Register of Historic Places, it met little enthusiasm from the states own historic preservation staff. By the time it had been reworked for its May 2006 environmental assessment, the cost had risen to $18.5 million and it had been whittled down in size to a basement and a single story of dining space, like the original. I understand what I have to do to make everybody happy, Carl said back in 2004. Im going to make everything work for everybody. But with just one floor of dining space, there would be only one full-on view of the Atlantic. That was reserved for the catering guests. The two restaurant spaces were set farther back and on the east and west sides of the building, looking mainly eastward toward the shrubbery along the parking lot or westward toward passersby on the central mall. Though the state reserved final control over the design of the building, it had no objections to this layout pending last spring, when it announced Carl as the next operator of the Boardwalk Restaurant. Only then, Carl said, did he reach out to Donald Trump. He had been a fan for a long time, naming the Apprentice star his fantasy lunch partner in a

PHOTO COURTESY OF LONG ISLAND REGIONAL ARCHIVES

Construction of the first boardwalk restaurant in 1935. The building was destroyed in a 1964 fire. Hempstead Industrial Development Agency director Fred Parola. The state justifies this clause in the contract by noting Trump and Carl must put in $11 million of their own capital before they can borrow against the lease. Anyone who believes Trump is getting a sweet deal, state officials say, ought to consider that his group was the only bidder. Carl says its because it takes a unique combination of skills and patience to build and run a state-owned catering hall. Other developers suggest the paucity of rivals points to a weakness in the catering market. Look at the recent failure of the venerable Huntington Townhouse, they say. Looking at the figures I play to peoples fantasies, Trump famously said in his 1980s bestselling book, The Art of the Deal. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. Thats why a little hyperbole never hurts. A little Trump hyperbole seems to be in play at Jones Beach, as a peek inside the states files makes clear. Though he has called this a $40 million building, he and Carl plan to spend considerably less about $18.5 million in construction costs. Another $7 million would go to furnishings and design and other costs. Records show that by the time Trump entered the picture, Carl had not only won the bid but had fully developed the business model, building design and cost estimates for a hall he planned to call Carlyle on the Ocean. The state advertised for bids in January 2004. Castro, the sofabed heiress whose tenure as parks commissioner was marked by a drive to attract private investment, had pushed for a more creative approach for some signature properties, hoping to draw entrepreneurs willing to improve on the dreary institutional offerings state parks had delivered since Moses was pushed out in the 1960s. Moses, the public-works titan who treated Jones Beach as the summer capital of his political empire, built the first restaurant in 1936 for $300,000 and gave the no-bid contract to a concessionaire who lavishly entertained Moses guests as thanks for easy terms, according to Moses biographer, Robert Caro. When the original restaurant burned in 1964, Moses commissioned a modernist $1.5 million replacement from architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, awarding it to the same concessionaire for a lease so low $18,000 a year it didnt even cover the cost of construction, Caro wrote. Other concessionaires followed. The state demolished the decaying structure in 2004. The previous people had a terrible building there terrible! Trump said Friday. It was a brick nothing and it wasnt of quality, and in addition it wasnt operated well. Nobody would have held their wedding there. But though Castros office sent out 298 solicitation letters to drum up interest, it got just two proposals in March 2004, from Carl and the Riese Organization. That national hospitality company offered to build a much more modest $2.5 million facility that it expected would do $3.5 million in business, with revenues split evenly between catering and the restaurant. But Riese dropped out of the bidding a month later after it was passed over for the other Jones Beach contract, the fast-food concession, which produced $4 million in revenues last year. Fixed up Bethpage clubhouse Carl was thinking much bigger from the get-go. I expect this to be the largest-grossing facility on all of Long Island. he told state officials in 2004. The onetime principal of Carlyle Kosher Caterers of Great Neck who had gone on to Oheka Castle and Eisenhower Parks Carltun on the Park, Carl scored a career breakthrough with the 2000 state contract to rebuild and refurbish Bethpage State Parks decaying clubhouse. He added a ballroom that has boosted revenues and won high marks for the quality of the food, while keeping golfers happy with their own informal restaurant at another end of the building. Carlyle on the Green grossed $10 million last year, but

NEWSDAY, SUNDAY, APRIL 22, 2007

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Trump trades trash talk with Moses biographer

BY ELIZABETH MOORE
elizabeth.moore@newsday.com

Now, Donald Trump is taking on Robert Caro. I thought it was a mean-spirited book written out of pure jealousy by somebody that couldnt carry his jock, Trump said Friday.

Come again? Jock. By somebody that couldnt carry Robert Moses jock, Trump said again. Trump was talking about Robert Caros 1974 biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Now in its 44th printing, Caros book won the 1975 Pulitzer

Prize for biography for its devastatingly detailed portrait of Moses public works empire. Trump, who has built a career on thinking big, feels a special kinship with Moses. Some of their biggest projects have been linked at rail yards on Manhattans Upper West Side, at United Nations Plaza and now at Jones

Beach. He is, he says, a big fan. Public revulsion at the arrogance described in Caros book has been tempered with respect for Moses achievements in recent years. But Caro, a former Newsday staff writer, makes no apologies for his book. If he has read it, he didnt understand it, the author re-

sponded Friday. He certainly appears never to have read or understood the chapters on Jones Beach, that masterpiece of public works, whose creation I celebrated at length in The Power Broker. . . . It will be interesting to see what endures longest: the book or his catering hall.

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NEWSDAY PHOTO / JIM PEPPLER

The site of Trump on the Ocean last week. Work on the latest restaurant and catering facility on the Jones Beach boardwalk is due to start this spring. 2000 Newsday article. He had admired the way Trump rebuilt Central Parks Wollman Skating Rink, a job bungled by New York City. He got his chance for face time last summer at a reception honoring Trumps donation of parkland to the state. I couldnt do it alone, Carl said. I needed somebody that would understand the striving for quality that I stand for a level of style and standards. Trump sees possibilities Donald Trumps developer father had a family membership at the private Atlantic Beach Club to the west, where cabana boys set out the chairs and bring the drinks. But Trump said he visited Jones Beach often as a teenager, to socialize, and got to know it very, very well. He saw the possibilities in Carls project. They agreed Trump, the builder, would build the facility and he, the caterer, would run it. Sources give contradictory reports of their ownership split; neither of them is saying. On Aug. 30, Trump filed articles of organization for a limited liability corporation called Trump Palace on the Ocean. He seems to be the only one associated with this project who really liked that name. Carl said he delicately resisted. His architects pointed out that Moses Jones Beach structures have always been known as castles in the sand, not palaces. Some state officials blanched and others laughed at the thought of that word, with its connotations of gambling and luxury, being attached to this Progressive-Era civic tribute to ordinary working people. Sources say it finally fell to Castro to tell Trump it was a nonstarter. Bernadette did not like the word Palace because it indicated things she didnt like for the site, Trump acknowledged. . . . I was a little surprised, frankly. I have a Trump Palace in New York . . . and I have one in California. Its a great name, but the vast majority of people surprisingly felt that the word Palace wasnt as good. . . . I went with Bernadette. Castro declined to comment for this story. Carl has found Trump easy to work with. He says, Normally, I want to change things, but this time I dont, Carl said of their meetings to review the plans. Hes not micromanaging this business, to be quite frank with you. But when it comes to the nuts and bolts of building, Michael Russo, the Hawkins Webb Jaeger architect who has developed the building plans, said Trump has shown both expertise and delight in the fine details. He asked, What are you looking to put on the floors inside? Russo recalled. I said well probably put limestone and marble. He says, I have this great marble that I love, and he gave me a piece of it. The stone was Breccia Oniciata, a delicate banded marble that Trump had used at 40 Wall Street, a 1930 landmark office tower. It was sepia, and it worked great, Russo said. One aspect of Carls plans did change more dramatically, though: Carlyle on the Oceans original 40-year revenue projection of $828 million became Trump on the Oceans $1.5 billion. Carl said that had less to do with the marquee value of the Trump name than it did with his staffs ability to develop a more profitable business plan as they honed their building layout. New parks chiefs agenda The Jones Beach deal was one of the last major moves of Castros tenure as commissioner. Her replacement, former Nature Conservancy state director Ash, has a somewhat different agenda. Ash, who most recently headed the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, has put combating global warming and improving parks infrastructure at the top of her priority list. Soon after taking office in January, she let Carl and Trump know the building plans had to change. We wanted the public restaurant to be facing the ocean so the public which is what we are has the benefit of looking at the ocean as theyre sitting there with either their hamburger or their grilled cheese or their Bloody Mary, she said in an interview Friday. So a new set of plans was drawn up that raised the restaurant to a level half a story above the catering rooms. It will still be set further back, so that the roofline along the Boardwalk remains no higher than it was in the 1960s restaurant. But on a clear day, restaurant patrons will now be able to gaze a little further out to sea than catering hall guests. Still, the Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities told Ash last week they feared what the scale of Trump on the Ocean will do to the visual balance of Jones Beach, a recognized masterpiece of planning, design and engineering and a site of global importance. For one thing, there are those Trump on the Ocean signs. A Friendlys sign was removed from the West Bathhouse two years ago after SPLIA called it an eyesore that was grossly inconsistent with Moses noncommercial aesthetic, which intentionally forbade private concessions. Now, SPLIA is bemoaning the 7 1/2-foot-tall monuments bearing the Trump brand that will greet motorists along Ocean Parkway at the heart of Moses mall. Eight more wall Trump on the Ocean plaques will adorn the building, along with directional and informational signage on roadways. SPLIA says it is most unhappy about the dramatic expansion Trump plans for the parking lot in front of the restaurant, which will dramatically impact the vista Moses intended for the park by replacing a large sweep of green space with an area dominated by paving. Ash said she values SPLIAs input but it comes too late. The signs and site plan were set in contractual concrete after a lengthy review process, including a May 2006 public hearing for what was then Carlyle on the Ocean, which the preservation group didnt attend. The time to have said this was during the public hearings, a while back, Ash said Friday. The contract is the contract . . . My ability to change things now, according to the kinds of things they were concerned about, I dont have the ability to do that. Russo said he has poured himself into the job of sensitively honoring the spirit of Moses original design. Its been a monumental task to figure out all the considerations, he said. Its the walker, its the diner, its the patron, its the bride, its the park official everybody. This is a facility for everybody. There are other lingering questions for those who are passionate about the parks history and future. Was such a long lease really in the states best interest? If Trump and Carl borrow more than they can repay, whose name will wind up on that monument sign? But Carl said any worries about restaurant goers being treated like second-class customers is misplaced. After all, he said, the restaurant is his prime marketing tool for the catering facility. If they dont come there to see what the place is, how are they going to know? Trump on the Oceans namesake says it will command the largest section of oceanfront for a facility of its kind anywhere in the country. Its going to be a very important thing for Long Island, and its going to be a very glamorous thing for Long Island, Trump said. This is really a tribute to Robert Moses. He would be very proud of this.

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