Hugeacquisition of Virginia's Biggest Vineyard Donald
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DONALD TRUMP’S GREAT, AMAZING, ABSOLUTELY ACQUISITION OF VIRGINIA’S BIGGEST VINEYARD A LOOK AT HOW THE WOULD-BE PRESIDENT REALLY NEGOTIATES HUGEBY MARISA M. KASHINO 80 WASHINGTONIAN ★ NOVEMBER 2015 HUGE Trump used Albemarle Estate’s grand opening in July for some stumping. PHOTOGRAPH ON PREVIOUS PAGE BY ANDREW SHURTLEFF/CORBIS BY ON PREVIOUS PAGE PHOTOGRAPH DONALD TRUMP HAD BEEN BARNSTORMING to reopen the place in all its abundantly get sued than pay full price. For another, for a month by the time his shiny black Trumpified glory. he won’t let an old friendship stand in the helicopter touched down in Charlottesville Standing in front of the mansion’s way of a good bargain. And while he may in mid-July. columned entrance, the developer could not enjoy getting bogged down in contrac- On the stump, Trump had been bellowing have stuck to his real-estate talking points, tual fine print, he sure does love picking about just how tough he would be in negotia- steering the crowd of local pols, media, out drapes. tions: Unlike the loser politicians who made and neighbors to details such as the gold One more thing: When he wants to, Don- small talk with Chinese leaders, he’d said, he wastebaskets and floor-to-ceiling trompe ald Trump can be the neighbor from hell. wasn’t afraid to demand a deal on our terms. l’oeil. But Trump was a candidate now, so By the time he was through with Mexicans, this was no longer just some local-yokel At first blush, a Virginia country he’d insisted, their government would be chamber-of-commerce event. house seems an uncharacteristic purchase paying us for the fence along the US border. It didn’t take long for him to launch into for a New Yorker known for his skyscrap- TRUMP AT ALBEMARLE BY ANDREW SH URTLEFF/AP IMAGES; ALBEMARLE ESTATE COURTESY OF JIM BONNER COURTESY ALBEMARLE ESTATE IMAGES; ANDREW SH URTLEFF/AP ALBEMARLE BY AT TRUMP But now, on a pastoral swath just a short a campaign-style speech about how he’d ers, casinos, and seaside golf courses. But trip down the road from Thomas Jeffer- blown away the competition and come to as anyone with cable or a Twitter account son’s Monticello, Trump was talking about own the joint, the county’s most infamous knows, Trump likes things that are “amaz- a different kind of negotiation: the one that estate—and done so, naturally, under an ing” (as in every crowd at every campaign ended with his getting a steal of a deal on a incredible set of terms. The property, he stop), “great” (how America will be again Virginia bed-and-breakfast. explained, had once been listed for $100 mil- after he’s President), and “the best” (his The occasion wasn’t really a campaign lion. He’d gotten it for a measly $6.5 million. poll numbers). event at all. Rather, it was a ribbon-cutting “That’s what our country should be do- “If you look at us as a company, what’s for the Trump Organization’s latest gilded ing with its deals,” he boasted. the one thing that’s consistent? It has property—Albemarle House, which is to As with his policy proposals, The to be the biggest, the best, the greatest,” your typical Old Dominion country inn Donald left out most of the details that says Trump’s 31-year-old son, Eric, a vice what Trump is to your typical politically day. Like, say, the multiple lawsuits that, president of the Trump Organization and minded plutocrat. among other things, generated a paper heir to the family gene for hyperbole. “My In its day, the 23,000-square-foot trail giving us a much more transparent father, over the years, has bought some of mansion was among the largest and most view of Trump the negotiator than we the best mansions of the world. It’s just expensive in Virginia, with 45 rooms, a might have if he’d actually been negotiat- something he loves.” private chapel, and English gardens. But ing with a foreign regime. Eric is referring, first, to Mar-a-Lago, by 2010, the estate was in trouble. That’s Drill down and you discover there’s the 17-acre Palm Beach estate constructed when Trump entered the picture. And five plenty to learn about Trump from this in the 1920s by cereal heiress Marjorie years later, the real-estate mogul was there particular transaction. For one, he’d rather Merriweather Post. Trump snapped it up D 82 WASHINGTONIAN ★ NOVEMBER 2015 The Kluges liked to party at the home The Donald helped pick out the in the ’80s; Trump made it a B&B. drapes: “He decides in two seconds.” in 1985 for $10 million and later turned it was its proximity to Washington, where the tabloid excess of the go-go ’80s. into a members-only club and spa. And Eric lived as a student before graduating John Kluge and his wife Patricia, a former he’s talking about Seven Springs, originally from Georgetown in 2006. While there, model 34 years his junior, arrived in Char- built in 1919 by financier Eugene Meyer, he had a job at a private investment firm in lottesville in 1985 to raise their son in their eventual owner of the Washington Post, Tysons. “If you look at Tysons Corner when just-built neo-Georgian mansion. From the whose daughter Katharine Graham grew I worked there versus today, that place is beginning, the Kluges didn’t exactly fit with up there. In 1995, Trump bought the 213- not even comparable,” he says. old-money Virginia horse-country types. acre Westchester County spread for $7.5 As a Republican candidate, the elder They hosted movie stars and European million and converted it into a private Trump publicly disdains “totally broken” royals at Gatsby-grade parties and bedecked summer compound. Washington. But as a real-estate mogul, their home in the most opulent decor new Albemarle House, though much newer, he’s banking on the resilience of the place money can buy—from hand-engraved brass is similarly pedigreed. It was built 30 years whose economy is buoyed by the federal doorknobs to heavy gold custom drapery. ago by billionaire John Kluge. A media government. The Kluges gave millions to local causes, and entertainment mogul—he owned the Thus in 2009, a year before he grabbed but within a few years they also found Harlem Globetrotters and Ice Capades for Albemarle House, Trump bought the themselves at the center of a macabre as well as an empire of TV and radio sta- former Lowes Island golf club in Sterling. spectacle: Wildlife agents raided the “game tions—Kluge was a king of 1980s New York He spent $25 million upgrading it to a preserve” on their grounds where Patricia right alongside The Donald. According Trump National Golf Club, which will host liked to hunt, uncovering mass graves of to Eric Trump, his dad was a big Kluge the Senior PGA Championship in 2017. hawks, owls—and neighborhood dogs. fan: “John was the wealthiest man in the In 2012, he beat out a pack of bidders for Three gamekeepers were found guilty of world.” (Not quite, but in 1989 Forbes did Pennsylvania Avenue’s storied Old Post killing the animals, which had been men- name him richest in America.) Office, which will be reborn in 2016 as a acing birds kept on the Kluge property Buying the mansion of America’s Trump International Hotel, just blocks for shooting. At trial, according to a 1989 wealthiest resident might have been incen- from the White House. account in Spy magazine—the great chroni- tive enough for Trump, but the property “We couldn’t be more bullish on Wash- cler of Trump’s own ’80s misadventures—a had more to offer than just his old pal’s ington,” says his son. And in their efforts neighbor testified that he had once found imprimatur. It was also home to an award- to wrest control of Albemarle House, they his dog hanging by the neck on the Kluge winning vineyard, an obvious addition showed it. land. (The article hypothesized that the to the Trump family’s portfolio of luxury estate might be cursed.) brands. “Wine is incredibly sexy,” says Eric, Well before Trump ever laid The marriage survived the tabloid who oversees the Charlottesville property. eyes on it, Albemarle House had a history mess—throughout it all, the couple main- PHOTOGRAPH OF ALBEMARLE INTERIOR COURTESY OF JIM BONNER OF ALBEMARLE INTERIOR COURTESY PHOTOGRAPH Finally, and not insignificantly, there that fit nicely with the candidate’s roots in tained they knew nothing—but not by NOVEMBER 2015 ★ WASHINGTONIAN 83 much. In 1990, John and Patricia divorced. lawn, Trump made himself the immedi- She got to keep Albemarle. ate neighbor of the house. And who would Nine years later, Patricia established want a bank-owned mansion with The Kluge Estate Winery on 960 acres of the Donald camped out front? estate, with hopes of making top-tier wines. A couple of months later, the Kluge Early on, she and her new husband, Bill vineyard hit the auction block again. Moses, a former IBM executive, had much Trump swooped in and bought it for $6.2 success, beating California and French million, outbidding Virginia developer Sal vintages for industry accolades. The couple Cangiano. He now owned the vast majority then ramped up production and began of the land around Albemarle House. work on a related real-estate venture: a Of course, he didn’t have the mansion gated community of McMansions, each itself—yet.