Prez doomed club owner

MARK Fleischman, who bought Studio 54 from founders Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell, will never forget how Donald Trump cost him and his investors more than $1 million.

Fleischman doesn’t include the story in “Inside Studio 54,” his new book about the disco days, when beautiful people snorted cocaine through rolled-up hundred-dollar bills.

“It happened 10 years after Studio. I owned [supper club] Tatou at the time. Trump came in and had a great time,” Fleis- chman told me.

It was in the early ’90s, when Trump was between his marriages to first wife Ivana and second wife Marla. He owned the Plaza Hotel, and wanted a hip new club filled with beautiful women to replace the aging, touristy Trader Vic’s.

“We shook hands on a deal that I’d take over,” Fleischman said. Working with architect David Rockwell, Fleischman planned Zuzu, a club with a West African theme. “We went to Donald’s office, but he nixed it,” Fleischman said.

Fleischman found another designer and eventually opened the space as Gauguin, but it was short-lived.

“While we were in construction, the hotel was foreclosed on. Trump hadn’t told me. The bank came in like a ton of bricks.”

When asbestos then had to be removed, the basement-level club had no air-conditioning and very few customers.

“I lost a couple hundred thousand [dollars],” Fleischman said. “And my investors lost over a million.”