A condo hotel is not an apartment. It operates on the premise that the buyers have the right to use their condo units for only a certain number of days each year, and when an owner is not occupying their condo hotel unit the units get rented out as hotel rooms. It’s a great setup because both the owner and the management company collect revenues. The units in Trump SoHo are not designed for permanent residences, nor would an owner use his or her unit that way (the look, feel, and design of a luxury hotel is far, far different than that of a residential building). We worked tirelessly with the City to make our intentions clear.
As expected, everyone and their cousin came after me for this, and the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation called my plan a “Trojan horse” way to sneak condos into manufacturing districts across the City. They said my motives were entirely covert. How a 45-story building can be considered a covert operation is beyond me, but you get the idea. There were demonstrations and neighborhood alliances that made it clear that I would not be receiving a warm welcome. So what else is new? Meanwhile, the silent majority of the neighborhood actually supported the project and saw it for what it is: a major attraction for tourism and business. The project will significantly improve a neighborhood that had been artificially suppressed for years as a result of its antiquated manufacturing zoning.
Despite the very vocal minority, I wasn’t about to be slowed down. We started excavation in 2006 even though we had not yet received approval to build above ground.
Then another problem arose.
In December, the excavating contractors came across some human remains that were later determined to be about a century old. We immediately and voluntarily halted work. The police arrived, and the city ordered us to stop work on the lot altogether. This may not have been legal, but we agreed. We then hired a team of archeologists to excavate and identify the remains. At this point, what we didn’t need was more publicity while waiting for approval, but of course it made the news, and one director of a city preservation society quipped that we should rename the project Trump Condo Hotel & Mausoleum. It’s always something, isn’t it? In the end and despite all of the hoopla in the press, by attacking the skeleton problem immediately and in force we were able to get back to work within a week.
Then the bloggers got going on the subject of the hotel and the discovery, and it was a big topic for a while. We were also getting many letters from citizens and societies opposing our constructing the building. There were demonstrations at the site, and the controversy went on for close to a year. Additionally, we were accused of building a 45-story target for a terrorist attack, and there was an online cartoon that had a skeleton with a comb-over as an advertisement for the new building. One thing for certain is that all of New York and all New Yorkers knew I was building a new building. Someone once said I was a great promoter, but sometimes I don’t have to do a thing to get attention.
The hits kept coming, and it felt like being in the eye of the hurricane, but it made us solid and stronger in our mission. At one point, someone got hold of some of our early drafts of marketing materials mentioning that the units would be a great residential opportunity—which created a political and activist firestorm. However, we stayed focused on what we wanted: to get approval. We knew we couldn’t change the zoning nor could we build under the existing zoning if the building was characterized as residential. So we were very focused on proving to the City that the building was not residential and that we could proceed within the existing zoning laws.
We showed the City that we had specific constraints regarding occupancy that were very clear. My team ended up negotiating with the City for months over a six-page “Restrictive Declaration,” which included many hour-long sessions where the City officials would analyze and critique every comma in that document (literally). We were airtight and transparent in what was being offered. Our condo plan published everything in black and white. Nothing was hidden. As a result, we finally got approval—our proposed building was absolutely within the zoning laws of SoHo, and no one could argue otherwise. My father had always said, “Know everything you can about what you’re doing,” and that’s the advice I followed. Every adversity served as fuel in what had become a fight of city-sized proportions.
As of today, the Trump SoHo project is going along beautifully. Both Don Jr. and Ivanka are working on it with me and my partners, as did Sean Yazbeck, The Apprentice season five winner, and Julius Schwarz of Bayrock.
It’s going to be a wonderful, elegant, and tasteful addition to the SoHo neighborhood. There will be 25,000 square feet of commercial space that will include a top-notch restaurant, a 7,500-square-foot spa, and a 12,000-square-foot conference center, and there will be 360-degree views from the 12th floor up. We’ll have a stunning year-round pool with full-service private cabanas, a private library, a café, bar, and restaurant, and I can guarantee you that my SoHo neighbors are going to love it—eventually. It will enhance their property value, for one thing, because it’s going to be a beauty. Be sure to visit the famous manufacturing district of SoHo when you come to New York and take a look.
SoHo caused perhaps a few more problems than expected, but it was all in a year’s work—to us. That’s big city business and we are big enough to handle it. Be sure you have the same attitude—it will save you a lot of unnecessary anxiety.
COACH TRUMP
MAKE IT HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE
Adversity is a fact of life. Chances are that you will never wake up to an adversity-free day. Accept this as a challenge—rather than a disappointment. Be bigger than the problems, be ready to fight for your rights, and all will be well.
6
REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
If You Never Give Up, You’ll Be Able to Give Back
I was watching the morning news on television in my apartment on September 11, 2001, when I first saw what had happened. The rest I could see from my window. I had predicted an attack in my book The America We Deserve, which was published in 2000, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t affected by what happened that day. It was an act of depravity and spiritual destitution. After the attacks, some people and companies left New York City but I never considered moving. I’m a New Yorker and this is my home. I knew that New Yorkers are resilient and that New York City would not only survive, but thrive, which has happened.
Since then, the Trump Organization has always had an annual memorial of some sort on September 11. The first year, we forfeited our annual Trump Organization Christmas party in order to give the funds that would normally be used for that event to charity. All of us felt it was the right thing to do, and it was. Since then, we have had a memorial in the lobby and atrium of Trump Tower each year, and I attend as do other members of the Trump Organization.
In 2006 and 2007, we had the September Concert perform at Trump Tower on 9/11, and it was open to the public. The September Concert was founded in 2002 on the first anniversary of 9/11 with the message of peace through music. Haruko Smith, the founder, and Veronica Kelly, the vice chairman, have done an amazing job. My son Eric introduces the concert, and all of us attend. It’s a meaningful celebration and a positive response to a day that shouldn’t be forgotten.
It takes time for us to help coordinate this event and to make the space available in our very busy building, but it is worth every minute of it. That’s just one example of why it pays to never give up—you’ll eventually be in a position to give back.
I host many charity events at my golf courses and have the annual Red Cross Ball at my Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. These events don’t just happen—they require a lot of planning and that means time and effort, not to mention money. Owning properties is a lot more than just ownership—it’s about making them useful. If you plan to go into real estate just to make money or to feel powerful, that’s not enough. If you can see your gains as a way to share, you will find your work will be much more rewarding—and probably more profitable in the long run.
Every year we h
ost the Salvation Army in our lobby to kick off the holiday season. This has become a tradition. A band plays, the media is there, I give a brief speech, and the Salvation Army gets some of the recognition it deserves for the great job they’ve been doing for so many years. This too takes a lot of time to arrange, but we do it every year.
Sometimes being a giver will open you up to new talents. Each year I donate an autographed doodle to the Doodle for Hunger auction at Tavern on the Green. It’s a great event, and contributors have included Sting, Muhammad Ali, Larry King, Al Pacino, Billy Joel, Valentino, Bill Cosby, Paul McCartney, Kirk Douglas, Martina Navratilova, Peter Max, Bette Midler, Jack Nicklaus, Cindy Crawford, and many other distinguished people. It takes me a few minutes to draw something, in my case, it’s usually a building or a cityscape of skyscrapers, and then sign my name, but it raises thousands of dollars to help the hungry in New York through the Capuchin Food Pantries Ministry. The auction was an innovative idea that has helped many people, and I don’t mind spending a little time for a very good cause. Art may not be my strong point, but the end result is help for people who need it.
Doodle for Hunger
I can remember a friend who asked me why I had so many charity events at my properties. He seemed perplexed that I would do this, because it wasn’t really necessary, and he knew how much time it required. I said to him, “Because I can.” Believe me, those are powerful words, with an equally powerful feeling to go along with them. Imagine saying that to someone yourself—“Because I can!” It’s a great feeling, and it makes all the work that went into acquiring and developing those beautiful properties and buildings worth it.
We’ve all seen bad situations that we’d like to be able to help. Being successful allows you to help in a big way. That’s another reason to keep at it. Knowing you’re going to be able to give back more if you succeed is a wonderful incentive to keep going. If you never give up, you’ll be able to give back—and that’s something to remember.
7
EXPECT PROBLEMS AND YOU’LL BE READY WHEN THEY COME
Getting Trump Tower Off the Ground
Trump Tower was my first huge success, and I will always love this building. It makes me feel great that it’s now the number three tourist destination in New York City. Trump Tower has been famous for so long that most people think it’s just always been here, or that it just appeared one day on the midtown skyline of New York City. I can tell you that is not the case. In fact, people are always surprised to hear that I almost named it Tiffany Tower, and there are many other background incidents that made the construction of this landmark building particularly challenging. If you think putting up this tower was a magical occurrence, even for a developer like me, you’ve got some interesting reading ahead of you—especially if you enjoy labyrinthine stories.
Trump Tower
Robert Moses, a great figure in the history of New York City, said something that stayed with me the entire time I was attempting to get Trump Tower started and finished: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Sometimes I felt like changing it to say, “You can’t build a skyscraper without breaking a few heads.”
Nothing was easy from day one. To begin the saga, it took me almost three years to even get a response from the man who controlled the land I wanted to buy. I made calls and wrote letter after letter. I learned a lot about persistence, but I also learned that if you are passionate about something, receiving zero encouragement still won’t discourage you. I just plain wouldn’t give up. When the site eventually became available, I realized that my letters had helped.
The site where I wanted to build Trump Tower was adjacent to Tiffany’s. Further down the line, I needed to convince Tiffany’s to let me buy their air rights—their right to build a tall skyscraper on top of their store—for $5 million. That would prevent anyone from being able to rip down the Tiffany’s building and put up a tower that would block my views. I would be able to build a tower with soaring picture windows versus tiny ones, an aesthetic consideration that was of utmost importance.
In order to get the zoning variance I needed from the City of New York, I had to know whether I’d have the air rights. The man in charge of this told me he liked my idea and my price, but that he was going on vacation for a month and would get back to me. In a month’s time, I would have done a lot of zoning work as well as architectural work, and if I wasn’t sure of getting the air rights, I would be wasting a lot of time and work. Fortunately for me, I was dealing with a real gentleman, Walter Hoving, and he told me that his word was good. Period. In fact, he seemed insulted that I would question his decision and his word. Once in awhile, but not often, you run into someone as honorable as that.
Now that I had Tiffany’s air rights, I needed one more parcel, which was a tiny site along 57th Street adjacent to Tiffany’s. This was required by another New York City zoning regulation: You have to have a minimum of 30 feet of open space, like a rear yard, behind any building. Without this piece of property, I would have had to cut the rear yard out of the building we’d already designed.
It turned out that this piece of property was owned by Leonard Kandell, who was as honorable as Walter Hoving. However, he didn’t want to part with his land. He wasn’t a seller, and he wouldn’t budge. Until one day I found a bonus in the paperwork for my Tiffany deal. It included a clause that gave Tiffany an option to buy the Kandell property within a certain time frame because it was adjacent to Tiffany. Maybe something could be worked out with Kandell after all.
By now I realized what I was trying to do was never going to be easy. Every door required a lot of work just to get it cracked open to begin with. Robert Moses’ quote would surface again in my mind and I would just keep going. It helps to expect problems because then, in a sense, you’re ready for them and not thrown off balance. It’s good to remind yourself of that—daily, if necessary.
So then, I had to go back to Walter Hoving and ask him if I could buy his option on Leonard Kandell’s property as part of my deal with Tiffany’s. I knew he had no interest in buying Kandell’s property anyway. Walter agreed. However, Leonard said the option belonged to Tiffany and was not transferable. He might have been right. It was also possible that if I sued over this question, I might win the right to exercise the option.
So I explained the possibility of litigation to Leonard, and in less than half an hour, we managed to make a deal that was good for both of us: I would withdraw my exercise of the option, and Leonard would agree to extend my lease on his site from 20 years to 100 years, which was enough time to make it finance-able. Also in the lease, he eliminated any prohibitions against rezoning. Leonard and I remained friends, and I was allowed to continue on my quest to build Trump Tower.
I still didn’t have a final contract with Genesco, the company that owned Bonwit Teller, the store that was sitting on the property where I wanted to build Trump Tower. We’d managed to keep the whole deal completely secret and were expecting to sign contracts in a couple of months. Word began to leak out and suddenly Genesco was inundated with interested buyers, among them Arab investors with oil money. Not surprisingly, Genesco began to try to get out of the deal.
However, I had fortunately gotten a one-page letter of intent from Jack Hanigan, who had been brought in by Genesco to save them when they were having difficulties. He had been receiving those letters I’d been writing for three years. I let Genesco know that I would litigate and hold up the sale of the Bonwit property for years if they didn’t honor our deal. I wasn’t even sure if the letter would be legally binding, but I could prove to be a nuisance to them if they reneged.
Shortly after this, I got a call from the New York Times who had heard that I was about to make a deal with Genesco to buy the Bonwit building. We had kept this quiet but I realized I should take a risk, especially considering that Genesco was faltering on their side of the deal. So I told the reporter that we’d reached an agreement, and I was planning on building a new tower on the Bonwit site. T
herefore, the store would be closed, most likely, in a few months.
The article appeared the next morning, and I was hoping it would put some pressure on Genesco. What happened is something I hadn’t counted on—as soon as the article appeared, all of Bonwit’s employees went over to Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bloomingdale’s to hunt for new jobs, and as a result, Bonwit was having trouble running their store. Five days later, I had the contract signed with Genesco.
We hadn’t even gotten close to construction yet. This is a good example of the perseverance you need and some of the obstacles that can arise when you are trying to do something great. Sometimes it’s hard even when you’re trying to do something far smaller than a skyscraper. For those of you who think I have the Midas touch and everything comes easily, just remember some of these episodes when you confront your own problems along the way to success. Because believe me, you will have problems! It doesn’t matter if your name is Trump or not, we all experience these things. Expect it! When I look back, it was a wonderful, exhilarating experience and every difficult moment was worth it.
8
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
I get a ton of fan mail these days, and a large percentage of it is from people asking for advice. Sometimes entire classrooms will send me their questions. I’ve decided to include a few of these questions with my responses.
1. How do you handle the person who consistently makes the same mistakes over and over?I don’t. They’re working for someone else now.
Trump Never Give Up Page 3
