NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s name is being stripped off three luxury apartment buildings after hundreds of tenants signed a petition saying they were embarrassed to live in a place associated with the Republican president-elect.

In all, about 600 residents of the three rental towers in Trump Place signed the online petition, which began circulating weeks ago after the public release of a decade-old recording of Trump boasting about groping women and kissing them without their consent.

Tenants learned on Tuesday from the company that owns and manages the New York skyscrapers, which hold 1,325 rental apartments, that the huge gold letters spelling out “Trump Place” would be removed from the sides of the buildings within days.

“We’re all very excited and thrilled, and it’s about time,” said Marjorie Jacobs, who has lived in one of the buildings for five years. “We’re disgusted with the results of the presidency.”

A spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team, Hope Hicks, didn’t immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday. She told The New York Times in October that removing the Trump name would cause a building to “lose tremendous value.”

A spokesman for Equity Residential, the Chicago-based company that owns and manages the buildings, said its executives considered “the input of our residents” among other factors when making the decision to change the buildings’ names. Spokesman Marty McKenna said in an email that a “neutral building identity” might hold more appeal to current and future residents.

The letters spelling out Trump’s name could come down as soon as Wednesday, residents said. They will be replaced with the buildings’ addresses.

Several neighboring towers that also bear the Trump Place name but have different owners are sticking with the Trump brand.

In the early 1990s, Trump partnered with Chinese investors to develop a large area of land near Lincoln Center and the Hudson River on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. When Trump’s partners decided to sell the development in 2005 for $1.76 billion, he sued, arguing the price was too low.

Trump lost that litigation and remained a minority partner. His Trump Organization still manages some buildings in the development.

Brian Dumont, a wealth manager who has lived in his Trump Place apartment for four years, said the petition drive gained momentum after neighbors became increasingly embarrassed explaining to fellow New Yorkers that they lived in Trump buildings.

“You know how it is in New York, everyone asks you where you live,” he said. “And we found ourselves just recoiling.”

Voters in Manhattan resoundingly rejected Trump on Election Day. His main rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, pulled in more than a half-million votes, compared with fewer than 60,000 for him.

Trump, asked whether his comments on the campaign trail had hurt his brand, said in an interview on Sunday, “Who cares?”

“This is big-league stuff,” he said on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” ”I don’t care about hotel occupancy. It’s peanuts compared to what we’re doing. Health care, making people better.”</s>Trump Place buildings to go by 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Boulevard from now on

Three Trump Place buildings on the Upper West Side are changing their names to 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Boulevard this week, according to an email from landlord Equity Residential.

“The purpose of this change is to assume a neutral building identity that appeals to current and future tenants,” Equity Residential’s senior regional manager Mary Pawlisa wrote in an email to tenants, which was reviewed by The Real Deal. “Using The Street address for the building name is popular practice in NYC, and our well-known Riverside address makes it easy for visitors to locate the building.”

In October, residents at 160 Riverside Boulevard launched a petition to “dump the Trump name,” which quickly collected 241 signatures, according to a report.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the three remaining Trump Place buildings, the condominiums at 120, 200 and 220 Riverside Boulevard, would also change their name. Residents at 220 Riverside had petitioned for a name change.

The name change highlights concerns that Donald Trump’s divisive political platform could impact his real estate brand. In October, the Trump Organization decided to drop the Trump name from a new line of hotels.</s>He’s fired — or at least his name is.

Three Upper West Side buildings that bear Trump’s name will soon be scrubbed of any trace of the president-elect, according to Equity Residential.

The company said that rental buildings at 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Blvd. will no longer be called “Trump Place.” Instead, they’ll be referred to by their street addresses.

“We are removing the [Trump] name on those buildings,” said Equity Residential spokesman Marty McKenna. “The decision was to brand the buildings with a more neutral building identity that will appeal to all current and future residents.”

The changes are already in motion, and everything that has the Trump name on it will be removed from the buildings.

“We took a number of issues under advisement, including input from residents,” McKenna said.

He added that the company had a contractual obligation to use Trump’s name, but that contract recently expired.

Residents at the buildings have pushed for the move for some time, and 600 people signed an online petition asking for the Trump name to be scrubbed.

“Just as celebrities have their endorsements rescinded for bad behavior, Equity Residential should rescind its leasing arrangement with Donald Trump, whose behavior has surely tarnished the Equity Residential brand,” the petition said.</s>WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Trump Place, the apartment complex that stands on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the New York City, is going to drop its name after residents raised an outcry to drop the president-elect's name from the tower.



About 600 tenants reportedly signed a 'Dump the Trump Name' petition to remove Trump signage from the buildings. There are about 1,325 apartments in the complex, according to the New York Times.



The three buildings-- at 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Blvd. will be renamed for their street addresses, said landlord Equity Residential, according to Bloomberg.



'We are assuming a more neutral building identity that will appeal to all current and future residents,' the Chicago-based company said.



'The building is beautiful, [and] the service is impeccable. But the name is very embarrassing. I'm embarrassed to tell people where I live. I tell them 180 Riverside Blvd,' Marjorie Jacobs, a resident in the buildings, told Bloomberg.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX</s>Donald Trump won the election, but he's losing the Trump name that adorned three glitzy New York high rises.

Three Trump Place rental apartment buildings along the Hudson River are being renamed with just their street addresses -- 140, 160 and 180 Riverside Blvd. The "Trump Place" signs were removed from the buildings on Wednesday. The Trump Organization sold the buildings more than a decade ago.

Residents stood outside and watched the giant gold letters come down on Wednesday.

"This sign never really meant anything to me from the day I signed my first lease," said 10-year resident Aaron Bollman. "Obviously, the Trump name has a much different meaning to me now. I was really hoping he would lose and he would just go away, but that's not the case."

Bollman said he supported the decision to remove the name, that he thought he would make some of the residents feel better about the election results.

The buildings were purchased in 2005 by Equity Residential (EQR), a Chicago-based real estate company.

"Once Mr. Trump made the decision he was going to enter the political scene, we looked at it and said, 'We just want to be neutral. We don't want to have an opinion,'" Sam Zell, the company's chairman, told CNBC Wednesday.

He said that he first talked to Trump a year ago about removing the name, but that Equity had to wait until a deal to use the Trump name expired. He denied that the name was removed in response to a petition by building residents, or that Equity was worried about attracting protesters.

"He's going to be the president of the United States," Zell said. "That's a pretty damn good brand."

Related: Trump hotel not worth the trouble for wedding planners, travel agents

Building resident Linda Gottlieb started a petition to take down the Trump signs, along with her husband and a neighbor, three weeks before the election. "It's a small victory but it feels good," she said. "But how can anything take the sting out of the horror we're in?"

She added that "it doesn't get bluer than the Upper West Side of Manhattan."

The three buildings have about 1,300 apartments between them, and rents range from about $2,600 a month for a studio to $12,500 a month for a penthouse, according to the New York real estate site StreetEasy.com.

Three other buildings in the complex, which are condominiums rather than rental apartments, will keep the Trump Place name. They are still managed by the Trump Organization.

Related: What Donald Trump's campaign controversies mean for Ivanka

The apartment buildings were built by Trump starting in the 1990s in former railroad yards along the Hudson River. They have a view of both the river and Riverside Park. Gottlieb said she never thought much about the name when she moved in four years ago, but became more upset as the campaign wore on. She said the building owners were very responsive when she came to them last month with the proposal to change the name.</s>In the liberal stronghold of New York City, residents distraught over the incoming Republican administration were finding solace a week after the U.S. presidential election by placing handwritten, anonymous notes on the walls of a busy subway station.

On Tuesday, many notes offered support to immigrants or mocked Trump's promise to build a wall along the United States-Mexico border and have Mexico pay for it.

"This is the wall that love can build," read another.

Titled "Subway Therapy," the installation lining the underground walls beneath Manhattan's Union Square was the idea of artist Matthew "Levee" Chavez.

"The last couple days have been stressful and I wanted to provide people with an opportunity to engage in a small and easy way," he wrote in the magazine Quartz.

Anyone can post a note, and more than 10,000 people have, Chavez wrote on Instagram.

Democrat Hillary Clinton bested Trump 79 percent to 18 percent in New York City.

Writers of the sticky notes took varied approaches. Some pledged political action, saying "Vote in 2018" and "I will do my part to change this!"

A blue sticky note quotes novelist Zadie Smith on the subject of despair, and a pink one quotes Jesus' Sermon on the Mount: "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

New York's Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, struck a pro-immigrant message, posting a note with lines from the Emma Lazarus poem that appear on the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free... I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

The defiant stance expressed in the notes is the right message for New Yorkers to send, said waitress Caitlin Cherry, 28, as she paused to look at them.

"I'm happy that people who are visiting can see that not all Americans want this," she said.

In a separate sign of protest, three apartment buildings on Manhattan's Upper West Side are dropping the name Trump Place and will be known by their addresses, the trade publication Real Deal reported, citing an email to tenants from landlord Equity Residential. Some tenants had circulated a petition requesting the change.</s>The Democratic mayor and the wealthy Republican New York real estate developer traded insults during the campaign, but met for about an hour inside Trump's skyscraper headquarters.

Afterward, de Blasio said he expressed his concerns about Trump's policies toward immigrants, as well the need for tough Wall Street regulation and protecting the rights of racial and religious minorities.

De Blasio, who supported fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton against Trump in last week's election, said the two men had a candid and substantive discussion.

De Blasio said he told Trump immigrant families should not be torn apart by deportations, and that the police tactic supported by Trump of stopping and searching people on the street can drive a wedge between minorities and law enforcement.

New York historically has been a city filled with immigrants. According to census data, 37 percent of New York City's 8.6 million residents are foreign-born, far above the national figure of 13 percent.

"I tried to express to him how much fear there is - how much fear there is in communities all over this city," the mayor told reporters outside Trump Tower.

During the campaign, Trump called for the deportation of all of the estimated 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally. Trump said in a TV interview aired on Sunday his priority was to remove up to 3 million immigrants who have criminal records or are gang members or drug dealers, and would decide on the others after the U.S. border is secured.

The mayor last Thursday said New York would remain a sanctuary city shielding illegal immigrants, adding that "we are not going to sacrifice a half million people who live among us, who are part of our community."

Trump has said he may want to place some U.S. mosques under surveillance and suggested he may want to maintain a national database of Muslims. The New York Police Department has 900 officers who are Muslim, de Blasio said he told Trump.

The mayor declined to say what Trump's responses had been.

"I think they both said it was a very productive meeting," Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said separately, adding that the president-elect is open to speaking with a variety of people.

Trump during the campaign called de Blasio the worst mayor in America and in New York City's history. The mayor during the campaign called Trump dangerous and "one of the worst demagogues in recent U.S. political history."

Trump grew up in the New York City borough of Queens and still makes Manhattan his primary residence. Trump has not said whether he will continue to live part-time in New York after he takes office on Jan. 20.

De Blasio said he spoke to Trump about the importance of tough banking regulations and of tax cuts that do not favor the wealthy. Trump has promised a "dismantling" of the Democratic-backed 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law enacted following the financial crisis, and has promised deep tax cuts.

The mayor expressed some optimism that Trump would follow through on a campaign pledge to spend more on infrastructure.

Trump said during the campaign he would rebuild America's infrastructure including highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools and hospitals.

"It would have a hugely positive impact on millions of New Yorkers, and hopefully put a lot of people back to work," de Blasio said.
Three Trump Place buildings on New York City's Upper West Side are each changing its name to their street addresses in response to a residents' petition, and to assume a neutral building identity, according to the landlord Equity Residential's spokesperson.