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Donald Trump has never been accused of subtlety. So there is nothing retiring about the celebrity real-estate magnate's venture into Panama. His 70-floor sail-shaped Trump Ocean Club, under construction in Panama City's exclusive Punta Pacifica district, will be the largest and most expensive building ever built south of the Rio Grande. "Nothing like this has ever been attempted in Latin America," says head developer Roger Khafif, whose K Group construction firm is handling the $400 million project. "When you think of Sydney you think of the Opera House, when think of Paris you think...
More expensive than Miami real estate and priced three-to-eight times higher than property in the rest of the Panamanian market, the Trump Ocean Club is partially financed by a $230 million bond offering from Bear Sterns. That bond is now being handled by JP Morgan following the collapse of Bear Sterns in the 2008 global financial crisis. "Without Trump, we would have lost our shirt," Khafif admits. Since then, more than 2,000 construction workers add a new floor each week, silencing many of the earlier skeptics who claimed the project would never get off the ground...
...some doubts remain. Eric Jackson, owner of the English-language Panama News thinks that many of buyers in the Trump Ocean Club, which claims it is 90% sold, could be speculators rather than future tenants. "You go around Panama City and look at these new 'sold out' luxury towers at about 8 p.m. and there are hardly any lights on in them," Jackson says. Samuel Taliaferro of the PrimaPanama investment blog agrees. "I have received emails from a number of speculators who never intended on taking possession...
Others worry the Trump Ocean Club will only contribute to what they see as the city's coming urban-planning disaster. Marco Gandasegui Jr., a University of Panama professor with the Center for Latin American Studies, says many Panamanians are "convinced Panama City's skyline gives us a better image," but warns the building spree is putting an enormous strain on the city's infrastructure. "The Trump Ocean Club is just another example of the chaotic situation Panama City finds itself today," Gandasegui said. "It is squeezed into a tiny dead-end street where it will share space with another...
There are a precious few things in this world that people can't complain about. The writing skills of Shakespeare, for example, or a pink sky from an ocean sunset. And of course, the NCAA men's basketball tournament, which tips off on Thursday. Sure, a few fans are irked that their schools got snubbed from the Big Dance. But the tournament itself, with its brackets, buzzer beaters and wall-to-wall ball during the first two days, may be the most delightful sporting event on earth. Even the debate about which teams got shafted is part of the tournament...