The 2012 Miss Universe pageant would be held in Panama, according to Trump Ocean’s Club project manager Roger Khafif. Ivanka and Eric Trump gave a press conference on Wednesday at the spectacular building’s atrium to talk about its grand opening.
The global real estate slump has not soured Donald Trump’s flavor for grandiosity. He’s merely going global with it. In Panama.
This week two of his three children, who all serve as executive vice presidents to The Trump Organization, traveled here to unveil the first international building in their family’s real estate empire: The Trump Ocean Club, not just the largest building south of the border, but the world’s first Trump tower outside America.
“This building is a very important bridge for us as we begin to expand internationally, not just through South America, but the world,” Ivanka Trump, and executive vice president of development and acquisitions, told the Monitor during an interview in the hotel’s partially finished “sky lobby” looking out over the ocean bay and city skyline.
But why Panama? The Trump family’s first exposure to Panama came in 2003, when Panama City hosted the Miss Universe Pageant, which is owned by Mr. Trump. His daughter says she was immediately taken by the vibrancy, culture, and climate in Panama – a city on the rise, where skyscrapers stretch and twist upwards like concrete plants competing for sunlight. The team saw a potential opportunity to trump their opponents.
At a cost of $400 million, the nearly completed 70-floor, sail-shape building overlooks the Pacific on Panama City’s crowded Punta Pacifica neighborhood. With 2.8 million square feet of construction space – complete with five-star hotel, luxury spa, casino, restaurants, office space, and residential units – The Trump Ocean Club has already sold 95 percent of its units to wealthy buyers from more than 40 countries.
“We are building landmarks. And this one is going to be one by which all the others are judged,” says Eric Trump, the other executive vice president of development and acquisitions of the family business.
Roger Khafif, who is in charge of the project in Panama, mentioned that the building will start functioning in March, and that the hotel will open its doors in July. Donald Trump will travel to the country in August for the official inauguration. Then Khafif added that the Trumps talked about having the Miss Universe pageant back in Panama in 2012, -a project that has been mentioned in local media for a while- and of course, the beauty competition would serve as a perfect marketing tool for the newly completed Trump Ocean Club.
It would be the third time the Central American country hosts the event; the previous times were 1986 and 2003.
