USUALLY, my work-related travels involve visiting either romantic spots like New Jersey’s Gold Coast to check out K. Hovnanian’s development The Views at Hudson Point or northern Yonkers to drool over Ginsburg Development Co’s. $1.13 million penthouse at Riverwatch, with its views from two terraces of the Palisades and the Tappan Zee Bridge.
However, going to the Punta Cana section of the Dominican Republic last weekend was a bit different, especially in the company of a handful of Americans and two dozen hard-partying journalists from South America, Spain and Florida.
The developers have dubbed Cap Cana as “the world’s next great destination,” and last weekend 62 buyers paid an average of $6 million to buy empty 1.5-acre lots on a high bluff – called a “farallon” – overlooking the rest of the 30,000-acre project.
The $350 million in sales in just four hours – a record for the Caribbean – can be explained by the fact that the parcel is called Trump Farallon. Donald J. Trump was on hand to meet and greet buyers, including an unidentified woman who already owns a condo at Trump Park Avenue.
From the signature bluff, the site stretches as far as the eye can see along the Mona Strait, which separates the country from Puerto Rico. Cap Cana’s northernmost edge is next to Oscar de la Renta’s Tortuga Bay resort, which will be left in the dust once Cap Cana comes into its own over the next five years.
Already under construction is a marina for 1,000 boats, including the world’s largest yachts, as well as multiple condo and villa projects – some under the auspices of the Golden Bear himself, golfer Jack Nicklaus – and a handful of hotels.
The peaceful Sanctuary Hotel should be up and running in September, with suites and bungalows carrying a tab from $500 to $5,000 per night. This Alto Bella-owned hotel will have eight restaurants, including one by Alain Ducasse, hotel President Felix Felipe told us.
The Donald was also there to play golf on one of the three Jack Nicklaus-designed courses at Punta Espada Golf Club, which includes an already infamous 13th hole: an approximately 125-yard stretch over the sea that eats balls for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and which sources tell us ate Trump’s ball as well.
The youngest buyer, real estate investor William Ganz III and his fiancée, Jennifer McCloskey, from Baltimore, bought Lot No. 5 for $2.7 million. For Ganz, who complained to us that there is nowhere left in the United States to buy property and make money, it was his first international purchase. Another group paid the most at $12 million.
One in-house Cap Cana broker pocketed $12 million, another over $4 million for the day. Outside brokers interested in getting in on the action of future sales are being paid fees of 3 percent.
On Saturday night, we ran into sweaty, ruggedly handsome actor Esai Morales, who is known for his stint as a cop on the TV show “NYPD Blue” and who also has stars on the Bronx and Brooklyn walks of fame. He was dancing and celebrating with 600 others at a beach party after signing up, with partners he’d just met that afternoon, to buy Lot 71 for a plump $10.8 million.
On a large stage, “El Caballero de la Salsa” (“The Gentleman of Salsa”), Puerto Rican singer Gilberto Santa Rosa, had the primarily Latino audience up dancing in their guayaberas.
A fellow visitor, Miss World Venuzuela 2006 Federika Guzman, was front and center shaking her booty after interviewing Santa Rosa for her television show back home.
Trump told her she should have been in his pageant, the competing Miss Universe, which could be broadcast from Cap Cana in the future.
The night before, at a more formal pool party, fiery Argentinean pianist Raul Di Blasio held the same audience enraptured. There, we discovered upon our arrival that our “private” fireside chat with Trump was actually a Q&A on a stage along with Trump and Cap Cana developer Ricardo Hazoury and three other journalists in front of the audience and film crews.
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Sources say the Borders deal at One Hanson Place in Brooklyn for a 35,000-foot flagship is officially kaput due to the bookseller’s corporate reorganization. That means the landmarked, architecturally glamorous old Williamsburg Bank hall underneath The Dermot Co. and Canyon Johnson Urban Fund’s 37-story condo redevelopment is being pitched again by Jeffrey Roseman of Newmark Knight Frank.
