Fire Breaks Out at Trump Village in Coney Island, Seriously Injuring 1

CONEY ISLAND, BROOKLYN — In what was perhaps the most symbolic city emergency of the year, a civilian was seriously injured Friday morning in a fire that broke out in the Trump Village Estates complex in Coney Island, otherwise known as the abandoned stepchild of Donald Trump's real-estate empire, and the only housing project for tenants of modest income that bears the tycoon's name.

The fire broke out on the fifth floor of a 23-story building within Trump Village around 10:36 a.m., according to the Fire Department of the City of New York (FDNY). It was brought under control by 11:12 a.m.

The person injured in the fire, whose age and gender could not be provided by fire officials, was rushed to Staten Island University Hospital in serious condition, an FDNY spokesman told Patch.

The Trump Village Estates, no longer part of the Trump empire, were built by President-elect Donald Trump's father Fred Trump in the 1960s.

One telling excerpt from a 2010 New York Times profile of the estates:

As Trump Village — the only one of his developments that Fred Trump hung his name on — rose in the early 1960s, Donald, then a teenager, helped prepare the units for new tenants and then handled their complaints," the New York Times reported in 2010. At his father’s side, Mr. Trump said, he learned about contractors, and negotiations. Mr. Trump said his father had been “very proud of the project.” Reflecting on Trump Village, where he said he tried to stop by “every time I’m on the Belt Parkway,” Mr. Trump sketched out the differences between their real estate philosophies: once, he recalled, his father asked why he did not use brick instead of glass.

“I build the most luxurious buildings in the world; my father was extremely cost conscious,” Mr. Trump said. “Gucci is a hot store in Trump Tower for me. Waldbaum’s was the hot store for him.”

Yet perhaps in part because of the elder Trump's no-frills approach to the Trump Village Estates, "it's actually known to be one of the most financially stable complexes in all of Brooklyn," local real-estate agent Thomas Lipovetsky told Patch by phone Friday.

"It's an extremely popular community, and it was extremely well-built," he said. And in vast contrast to Midtown Manhattan's glittering Trump Tower, not a single unit within the Trump Village Estates has a mortgage taken out against it, according to Lipovetsky.

As for Friday's nasty fire: "I was told by the management that it's under control," the real-estate agent said. "My parents live in the building. I called them and they said the elevators were down. But everything else appears to be fine."

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