With the House having impeached President Donald Trump for a second time and corporate America distancing itself in the wake of the deadly Capitol insurrection, the Trump brand is taking a beating in the waning days of his presidency.

Even as pressure mounts to remove the president’s name from his signature property in Chicago, the Trump International Hotel & Tower, the brand may be hard to shed, potentially looming over the city for years to come.

Ald. Gilbert Villegas, Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s City Council floor leader, earlier this week said he plans to introduce an ordinance this month to remove the sign from the prominent property on the Chicago River, as the list of companies formally breaking ties with Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress grows.

The ordinance would bar any person convicted of treason, sedition or subversive actions from doing business with the city, including having a sign permit. Pending the results of Trump’s impeachment, the proposed ordinance may apply to the soon-to-be former president, Villegas said.

“That may allow us to take the sign down finally,” Villegas said Tuesday. “The sign just doesn’t represent Chicago’s values.”

Trump Tower, a gleaming 98-story skyscraper that includes condos, a hotel, restaurants, event and retail space near the Magnificent Mile, opened in 2009 to general architectural acclaim. It was branded five years later with a 2,891-square-foot sign spelling out T-R-U-M-P in 20-foot letters overlooking the Chicago River, spawning criticism and a change in the city’s signage laws.

The Trump brand’s shift from over-the-top opulence to hard-right politics has transformed the sign into a politically charged symbol, said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

“The Trump brand has become even more polarizing than ever,” Calkins said. “We’re going to see companies move very quickly to distance themselves from the Trump brand, and we’re going to see companies do it in a more overt fashion than they have before.”

The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump Tower has been struggling during the Trump administration, with plummeting condo prices, soaring hotel vacancies and a dearth of retail tenants.

Phil Skowron, a Chicago real estate agent specializing in the downtown Chicago luxury condo market, has sold or leased hundreds of Trump Tower condos over the past decade. He said prices have been falling in lockstep with President Trump’s approval rating.

“Ever since Trump became president, or really since he launched his campaign, that’s when the prices started to decline,” Skowron said. “I think they’ve hit rock bottom.”

There are 486 condominium units and 339 hotel rooms, a number of which are sold as condos. Currently, there are 48 condos, including 13 hotel rooms, on the market, Skowron said.

Skowron pointed to the $1.2 million sale in November of a two-bedroom condo that was originally purchased for $2.3 million in 2009, as a sign of how far the Trump Tower values have fallen since its Great Recession launch.

The Trump Hotel Chicago has not fared well during the Trump presidency either. Documents filed by the Trump Hotel with Cook County, obtained and posted online by The Washington Post, show that revenue declined from $72.3 million in 2015 to $50.3 million in 2018.

Things have gotten more difficult for all Chicago hotels during the pandemic, with occupancy at about 25% for 2020, down from about 74% the previous year, according to Michael Jacobson, president and CEO of the Illinois Hotel & Lodging Association.

Ted Mandigo, a Chicago-based hotel analyst, said the Trump Hotel has likely chased away many potential guests through its polarizing political association with the president. The tower became a lightning rod for protesters during the summer’s civil unrest, which Mandigo said didn’t help hotel occupancy either.

“There’s more negative impact on the property than positive impact of having the Trump brand at this present time,” Mandigo said.

Reva Nathan, a high-end Chicago wedding planner, used to recommend Trump Hotel.

Nathan held a number of weddings and events at Trump Tower prior to his presidency and said she liked everything from the ballroom to the food and service. She cooled on the venue during his administration, as did her clients, essentially removing it from primary consideration.

With the events of last week, Nathan is ready to boycott the venue entirely.

“At this point, if someone brought Trump Hotel up, I would have to say, ‘You need to have another planner,’” Nathan said. “I just don’t think I would want to give him or any of his companies any business.”

Retail leasing in the building has not significantly declined during the Trump administration, because it never took off in the first place. Located a block off of North Michigan Avenue, with hard-to-navigate access along the river, most of the 62,000 square feet of designated retail space has remained empty since the building opened.

Leslie Karr, vice president of brokerage firm SVN Chicago Commercial, said the layout of the space and difficult access does not suit retail in a very competitive landscape. Rebranding the building, she said, would not make a difference.

“Even if Trump were the most popular president in history, the problems with the building are physical,” Karr said.

Many companies are distancing themselves from the Trump brand as his presidency comes to a chaotic end following last week’s deadly attempt by Trump supporters to stop the certification of Joe Biden as president.

The PGA announced Sunday it was pulling the 2022 PGA Championship from the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in New Jersey because it would be “detrimental” to its brand.

Dow Chemical, Marriott International, American Express and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association were among several companies that said they will not contribute to the campaigns of lawmakers involved in the effort to deny certification to Biden.

Facebook and Twitter banned Trump from their social media platforms, while Amazon, Apple and Google effectively silenced Parler, a social media network popular among Trump followers, by removing it from their platforms.

Deutsche Bank, the German bank and primary lender in the Chicago Trump Tower and other ventures, said it will no longer do business with Trump, The New York Times reported, citing a person familiar with the bank’s thinking. A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined to comment.

The damage to the Trump brand may last long beyond his presidency, Calkins said.

“As soon as Trump leaves office, his ability to change what his brand stands for begins to diminish, because he’s just not going to be the center of attention,” Calkins said. “From a branding perspective, that’s a big problem for Trump and for the Trump Organization.”

For Trump Tower in Chicago, one solution may be removing Trump’s name, and his giant sign, from the building, Calkins said.

While the Trump name has been removed from several New York properties and a Panama hotel during his presidency, it may be more difficult to pull off in Chicago.

Mounted 200 feet above ground, the backlit Trump sign was “lawfully installed” in 2014, Chicago planning department spokesman Peter Strazzabosco said. But the city’s zoning ordinance was twice amended to ensure a sign of its size and location would never be permitted again.

In 2014, a special sign district was established along the river that prohibits new signs from being located between the second floor and the roof. Size limits were amended in 2018, capping signs at 1,100 square feet — less than 40% the size of the Trump sign.

But the Trump sign is grandfathered in, and the ordinances do not regulate content, Strazzabosco said.

“As long as the sign is lawfully maintained as an advertisement for the hotel or a related entity within the building, there are no provisions in Chicago’s municipal code that could force its removal,” Strazzabosco said.

The name on the building keeps a lot of potential condo buyers away, Skowron said. If Trump Tower were to sell, or even just drop the name, he said prices would rise overnight.

“The real estate is still the same real estate,” Skowron said. “It’s only discounted because of the name of the building and the association with the president.”

A 50-unit residential condo building, Renelle on the River, opened just north of Trump Tower in 2019. Eight of the three-bedroom units, which are priced at about $1.3 million, remain unsold, according to the building’s developer, Alan Lev.

While some early prospective buyers said they didn’t want live under the shadow of the Trump name, Lev said it is now mostly water under the bridge.

“Today, it doesn’t hurt us,” Lev said. “What hurts us is the fact that we have a city that’s pretty shut down.”

Sanjay Shah, 52, the CEO of Hoffman Estates-based tech company Vistex and the owner of the most expensive condo in Trump Tower — the 89th floor penthouse — said he is “neutral” on the Trump brand and still bullish on his investment.

In December 2014, Shah bought the 14,260-square-foot full-floor penthouse, which includes five bedrooms and a 360-degree view of the city, for $17 million, then a record for Chicago residential real estate.

Six years after the purchase, he has yet to build it out or move in, but still plans to live there one day. Shah is confident that when he does choose to sell, he will “easily recover” his investment from a like-minded buyer undeterred by the Trump brand.

“I’m not thrilled with the ongoing controversies regarding his administration, but I’m not at all concerned about the name Trump associated with that piece of property,” Shah said. “I have to separate Trump the real estate brand versus Trump the politician.”

Even if Trump Tower drops the name or sells, it may take a long time before Chicagoans fully accept a name change.

Many people still refer to 875 North Michigan Avenue as the John Hancock Center, and call Willis Tower by its original name, Sears Tower. Removing the Trump sign won’t immediately eliminate Trump Tower’s association with the soon-to-be former president, Calkins said.

“It will still be Trump Tower for a long time, but there’s no question that taking down the sign would hasten that process,” Calkins said.