Trump

by Donald J. Trump

  There’s just one catch: we’re in the middle of designing our project with new architects and concepts, and nobody—including Goldberger—has seen our new plan. He was knocking a design he hadn’t even looked at yet.

  “Dear Paul,” I write. “Your recent article is an obvious ‘setup’ in preparation for the negative review you intend to do on Television City—no matter how great it is. Just think, if you are negative enough (which I am sure you will be) you might even help convince NBC to move to New Jersey.”

  My people keep telling me I shouldn’t write letters like this to critics. The way I see it, critics get to say what they want to about my work, so why shouldn’t I be able to say what I want to about theirs?

  WEDNESDAY

  9:00 A.M. I go with Ivana to look at a private school for my daughter. If you had told me five years ago that I’d be spending mornings looking at kindergarten classrooms, I would have laughed.

  11:00 A.M. I have a press conference for the Wollman Rink. When I get there, I’m amazed. There are at least twenty reporters and photographers milling around.

  Henry Stern, the parks commissioner, goes to the microphone first and he is very complimentary to me. He says that if the city had tried to undertake the current renovation by itself, “we would now be awaiting Board of Estimate approval for what Donald Trump has already done.”

  When it’s my turn, I explain that we’ve laid twenty-two miles of pipes, that they’ve all been thoroughly tested and there are no leaks, that the project is ahead of schedule by at least a month, and under budget by about $400,000. I also announce that we’ve set a grand opening for November 13—and that we have a show planned for that day which will include most of the world’s great skaters.

  After I finish, the reporters ask a million questions. Finally Henry and I step down into the rink. If we can’t have a real concrete-pouring, at least we’ll have a ceremonial one. A couple of workmen pull over a wheelbarrow full of wet concrete and point it down toward us. Henry and I shovel some concrete onto the pipes while the photographers click away.

  As many times as I’ve done these things, I have to say I still find them a little ridiculous. Think of it: a couple of guys in pinstripe suits shoveling wet concrete. But I like to be accommodating. As long as they want to shoot, I’ll shovel.

  12:45 P.M. The minute I get back to my office, I start returning calls. I want to get as much done as I can now, because I have to leave early for Trenton, to attend a retirement dinner for a member of the New Jersey Casino Control Commission.

  The first person I call back is Arthur Barron, the president of Gulf & Western’s entertainment group, which includes Paramount Pictures. Martin Davis, the chairman of G&W, has been my friend for a long time, and Barron apparently called in response to a letter I wrote to Marty two weeks ago. In the letter I explained to Marty that I’d recently purchased a fantastic site and was in the midst of designing a building with eight motion picture theaters at its base, and I wondered if he might be interested in making a deal for them.

  “As you are aware,” I wrote, “there is no one I would rather do business with than Marty Davis.”

  That happened to be true, for Martin Davis is a truly talented man, but there are also a dozen other companies who would kill to have eight theaters in a top location. In other words, if I can’t make a deal I like with Marty, I’ve got a lot of other options.

  As I anticipated, when I get Art Barron on the phone, he wants to set up a meeting to discuss the theaters. We make a date for the following week.

  1:30 P.M. I return a call from Arthur Sonnenblick, one of the city’s leading brokers. Three weeks ago, Arthur called to say he had some foreign clients who were interested in buying the West Side yards. He wouldn’t tell me their names, but he said they were serious people, and they were prepared to make me a very substantial offer for the site—far more than the $100 million I paid a year ago.

  I didn’t get too excited. On the contrary, I say to Arthur, “The bid sounds low. If you can get them higher, I might be interested.” Now Arthur’s calling to give me a status report.

  The truth is, I really don’t want to sell the yards at any price. To me, those one hundred acres overlooking the Hudson River are the best undeveloped real estate site in the world. On the other hand, I don’t want to rule out anything. Arthur tells me his clients are still very interested, that they may come up a little, but he doubts they’ll go much higher. “Keep pushing,” I tell him.

  2:00 P.M. The contractor who’s building my pool at Mar-a-Lago is on the phone. I’m busy, but I take the call anyway. We’re going to great lengths to build a pool in keeping with the original design of the house, and I want to make sure every detail is right.

  Buying Mar-a-Lago was a great deal even though I bought it to live in, not as a real estate investment. Mar-a-Lago was built in the early 1920s by Marjorie Merriweather Post, the heiress to the Post cereal fortune and, at the time, Mrs. Edward F. Hutton. Set on twenty acres that face both the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth, the house took four years to build and has 118 rooms. Three boatloads of Dorian stone were brought from Italy for the exterior walls, and 36,000 Spanish tiles dating back to the fifteenth century were used on the exterior and the interior.

  When Mrs. Post died she gave the house to the federal government for use as a presidential retreat. The government eventually gave the house back to the Post Foundation, and the foundation put it up for sale at an asking price of $25 million. I first looked at Mar-a-Lago while vacationing in Palm Beach in 1982. Almost immediately I put in a bid of $15 million, and it was promptly rejected. Over the next few years, the foundation signed contracts with several other buyers at higher prices than I’d offered, only to have them fall through before closing. Each time that happened, I put in another bid, but always at a lower sum than before.

  Finally, in late 1985, I put in a cash offer of $5 million, plus another $3 million for the furnishings in the house. Apparently, the foundation was tired of broken deals. They accepted my offer, and we closed one month later. The day the deal was announced, the Palm Beach Daily News ran a huge front-page story with the headline MAR-A-LAGO’S BARGAIN PRICE ROCKS COMMUNITY.

  Soon, several far more modest estates on property a fraction of Mar-a-Lago’s size sold for prices in excess of $18 million. I’ve been told that the furnishings in Mar-a-Lago alone are worth more than I paid for the house. It just goes to show that it pays to move quickly and decisively when the time is right. Upkeep of Mar-a-Lago, of course, isn’t cheap. For what it costs each year, you could buy a beautiful home almost anywhere else in America.

  All of which is a long way of explaining why I take this call from the pool contractor. He has a small question about the matching of the Dorian stone we’re using for the decking and I care about every detail when it comes to Mar-a-Lago. The call takes two minutes, but it will probably save two days of work—and ensure that the job doesn’t have to be ripped out and done over later.

  2:30 P.M. A prominent businessman who does a lot of business with the Soviet Union calls to keep me posted on a construction project I’m interested in undertaking in Moscow. The idea got off the ground after I sat next to the Soviet ambassador, Yuri Dubinin, at a luncheon held by Leonard Lauder, a great businessman who is the son of Estée Lauder. Dubinin’s daughter, it turned out, had read about Trump Tower and knew all about it. One thing led to another, and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government. They have asked me to go to Moscow in July.

  3:00 P.M. Robert stops in, and we talk about several issues relating to NBC and the West Side yards.

  3:30 P.M. A friend from Texas calls, to tell me about a deal he’s got working. He happens to be a very charming guy—wonderful looking, wonderfully dressed, with one of those great Texas drawls that make you feel very comfortable. He calls me Donny, a name that I hate, but which he says in a way that somehow makes it okay.

  T
wo years ago, this same friend called me about another deal. He was trying to put together a group of wealthy people to take over a small oil company. “Donny,” he said, “I want you to invest fifty million. This is a no-lose proposition. You’ll double or triple your money in a matter of months.” He gave me all the details, and it sounded very good. I was all set to go forward. The papers were being drawn up, and then one morning I woke up and it just didn’t feel right.

  I called my friend back and I said, “Listen, there’s something about this that bothers me. Maybe it’s that oil is underground, and I can’t see it, or maybe it’s that there’s nothing creative about it. In any case, I just don’t want to go in.” And he said, “Okay, Donny, it’s up to you, but you’re missing a great opportunity.” The rest is history, of course. Oil went completely to hell several months later, the company his group bought went bankrupt, and his investors lost every dime they put up.

  That experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.

  Because I held back, I saved $50 million and the two of us have remained friends. As a result, I don’t want to reject him outright on his new deal. Instead, I tell him to send up the papers. In reality, I’m not too likely to get involved.

  4:00 P.M. I call back Judith Krantz. You’ve got to give it to her: how many authors have written three number-one best-selling books in a row? She also happens to be a very nice woman. Trump Tower is the setting for her latest novel, I’ll Take Manhattan, and I’m a character in the book. At Judy’s request, I agreed to play the role of myself in a scene from the miniseries based on her book, and filmed at Trump Tower.

  Now Judy is calling to say that the scene, with Valerie Bertinelli, came off well. I’m happy to hear it, although I’m not about to quit my day job. Still, I figure it’s not a bad way to promote Trump Tower—on national television, in a miniseries that runs during sweeps week and is virtually guaranteed to get huge national ratings.

  4:30 P.M. My last call is to Paul Hallingby, a partner at Bear Stearns who handled the $550 million in bond issues we did successfully for our two casinos in Atlantic City during 1985.

  Now we’re talking about setting up something called the Trump Fund, through which we’d buy distressed and foreclosed real estate, particularly in the Southwest, at bargain-basement prices.

  Hallingby tells me that he’s putting together a prospectus, and that he’s confident we’ll easily be able to raise $500 million in a public offering. What I like about the deal is that I’d retain a large equity position in any purchase we made, but I wouldn’t be at any personal risk, in the event that any of the deals went bad. What I don’t like is the idea of competing with myself. What happens, for example, if I see a piece of distressed property that I want to buy on my own but that might also be good for the fund?

  In any case, I’ll look at the prospectus.

  * * *

  5:00 P.M. I’m driven to the 60th Street heliport, in time to catch a helicopter and be in Trenton for cocktails at 5:30 P.M.

  THURSDAY

  9:00 A.M. I sit down with Abe Hirschfeld. Basically, Abe feels hurt that Governor Cuomo personally led a fight to push him off the ballot. I tell Abe I understand how he feels, but that the governor is a good guy, and that in any event it would look ridiculous for Abe, who is a Democrat, to suddenly turn around now and endorse a Republican. I also point out that as a practical matter, Cuomo is going to win re-election by a landslide, and that it’s a lot better to side with a winner than a loser.

  Abe is a pretty stubborn guy, but finally he says, “Look, why don’t you get the governor to call me?” I tell him I’ll do my best. Abe has always been considered difficult. But I like him and his family a lot.

  10:15 A.M. Alan Greenberg calls. The market is down 25 points less than an hour after opening. Alan tells me everyone’s a seller, that nearly all stocks are down, but that Holiday is holding firm. I can’t decide whether I should be happy or sad. Part of me wants Holiday to drop off, so I can buy more at a better price. The other part of me wants it to go up, because at this point, every time the stock rises a point, I make a lot of easy money.

  * * *

  10:30 A.M. Harvey Myerson, the attorney who handled our USFL antitrust case, comes in for a meeting. Harvey is an incredible trial lawyer. He took a case in which no one gave us a prayer going in, and he managed to win on antitrust grounds, even though we were awarded only token damages.

  Even so, I’ve wondered, since the trial, whether perhaps Harvey was just a little too sharp for some of the jurors. Every day he’d show up in one of his beautiful pinstripe suits, with a little handkerchief in his pocket, and I’m just not sure how well that went over.

  Overall, I think he did as good a job as anyone could, and I still believe he’s our best hope on the appeal. One thing I like about Harvey is his enthusiasm. He’s still absolutely convinced he’s going to win the appeal.

  11:30 A.M. Stephen Hyde calls. After I bought out Holiday Inns’ interest in the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City and took over the management in June, I hired Steve to run the facility. Steve had been working as a vice president for Stephen A. Wynn at the Golden Nugget. Wynn is one of the best gaming guys around, and my philosophy is always to hire the best from the best. After a long-running negotiation, I offered Hyde a bigger job and more money, and he said yes. I think he also liked the idea of working for me, and he didn’t mind leaving Steve Wynn.

  Wynn is very slick and smooth, but he’s also a very strange guy. A couple of weeks ago, he called and said, “Donald, I just wanted to let you know that my wife and I are getting divorced.” So I said, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that, Steve.” He said, “Oh, don’t be sorry, it’s great, we’re still in love, it’s just that we don’t want to be married anymore. In fact, she’s right here with me. Do you want to say hello?” I politely declined.

  Hyde is calling to report on the August figures for the Plaza, which just came in. He tells me that gross operating profit was just over $9,038,000 compared with $3,438,000 for the same period a year ago, when I was still partners with Holiday Inns, and they were managing the facility.

  “Not too bad,” I say to Steve, “considering we still don’t have any parking.” Still, I can’t resist razzing him a little: “Now all you’ve got to do is get the hotel in mint condition.” I’m a stickler for cleanliness, and last time I visited the hotel, I wasn’t totally happy.

  “We’re working on it, Donald,” Steve says good-naturedly. “It’s already improving.”

  12:00 noon I walk over to the Wollman Rink, to watch the pouring of the concrete. This morning all of the papers had stories about our press conference.

  When I get to the rink, it’s surrounded by a convoy of cement trucks lined up as if they’re in a military operation. HRH, the construction company in charge of the project, has done a fantastic job moving things along, but this has to be the most incredible sight yet: thousands of pounds of wet concrete being poured from truck after truck into this huge rink. It’s like watching the world’s biggest cake get iced.

  Even though the press conference was yesterday, I notice photographers and camera crews all over the place. This is the event everyone was waiting for.

  1:30 P.M. I sit down with a reporter from Fortune who is doing a story about real estate and the new tax laws—with me on the cover. Contrary to what a lot of people think, I don’t enjoy doing press. I’ve been asked the same questions a million times now, and I don’t particularly like talking about my personal life. Nonetheless, I understand that getting press can be very helpful in making deals, and I don’t mind talking about them. I just try to be very selective. Norma must turn down twenty requests a week from all over the world. Also, when I do give an interview, I always keep it short. This reporter is in and out in less than twen
ty minutes. If I didn’t limit myself, I could spend my life talking to the press.

  2:45 P.M. A friend of mine, a highly successful and very well known painter, calls to say hello and to invite me to an opening. I get a great kick out of this guy because, unlike some artists I’ve met, he’s totally unpretentious.

  A few months back he invited me to come to his studio. We were standing around talking, when all of a sudden he said to me, “Do you want to see me earn twenty-five thousand dollars before lunch?” “Sure,” I said, having no idea what he meant. He picked up a large open bucket of paint and splashed some on a piece of canvas stretched on the floor. Then he picked up another bucket, containing a different color, and splashed some of that on the canvas. He did this four times, and it took him perhaps two minutes. When he was done, he turned to me and said, “Well, that’s it. I’ve just earned twenty-five thousand dollars. Let’s go to lunch.”

  He was smiling, but he was also absolutely serious. His point was that plenty of collectors wouldn’t know the difference between his two-minute art and the paintings he really cares about. They were just interested in buying his name.

  I’ve always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists. I sometimes wonder what would happen if collectors knew what I knew about my friend’s work that afternoon. The art world is so ridiculous that the revelation might even make his paintings more valuable! Not that my friend is about to risk finding out.

  4:00 P.M. A group of us meet in our conference room to go over the latest plans for the West Side yards project, which we’re scheduled to show to the city tomorrow morning. It turns out that Herb Sturz of the planning commission won’t be able to attend, but his key people will be there.

  There are perhaps fifteen people at this meeting, including Robert and Harvey Freeman, and Alexander Cooper and his team. Alex is the architect-city planner I hired two months ago to take over the design of the project, after it became clear that my original architect, Helmut Jahn, just wasn’t making it with the city. I don’t know if the reason was his Germanic style, or the fact that he is based in Chicago rather than New York, or just that he’s a little too slick. I do know that he wasn’t getting anywhere with the City Planning Commission.