Trump

by Donald J. Trump

  I took the letter of intent out of a folder and tore it in two, in front of Macri. And then I said to him, “If you should ever again decide to sell, I hope you’ll think of me first. In the meantime, good luck.”

  When I told Schrager what I’d done, he wasn’t happy, but to this day I’m convinced that my ripping up that letter—which may or may not have been binding—is the reason that Macri did come back to me, instead of going to any of a dozen other potential bidders, when it finally became clear that he couldn’t get his financing after all.

  Even before I signed the purchase papers in January 1985, I had the basic elements of my plan in mind, I intended to build many fewer buildings than Macri, and all along a single block. Views were the site’s single strongest selling point, and I wanted every apartment to have unobstructed views either of the Hudson River to the west, the extraordinary cityscape to the east, or both. I also intended to build much taller buildings than Macri had planned, to take full advantage of the views and also because I believed tall buildings would make the project more majestic and alluring.

  I also envisioned a huge retail shopping promenade on the ground level, along the riverfront in front of the buildings. What the Upper West Side of Manhattan needs more than anything else, I believe, is basic shopping services—large supermarkets, shoe stores, pharmacies, and hardware stores. Rents along Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, and Columbus Avenue have gotten so high that small shopkeepers have been driven out. It’s easier today to find a $100 pair of leather gloves on Columbus Avenue than a loaf of bread. One advantage of my low land cost is that I will be able to charge more reasonable rents to retail tenants.

  My plans were contingent, of course, on what sort of zoning I could get. I didn’t have to undertake complex cost analyses to know that the only way to make the project feasible was to get approval for many more units and total square feet of buildable space than Macri got. Unlike Macri, I was prepared to hold out for as long as it took—even into another city administration if necessary—to win approval for a plan I believe can be economically workable.

  My first goal was to put as much distance as possible between Macri’s approved project and my own vision for the site. Any link to his project could only hurt me.

  At the time he sold to me, Macri had yet to sign any formal contract with the city, and the city had yet to issue him a final building permit. I was under no obligation, therefore, to deliver on his many promises. Starting the process over from scratch meant I’d have to spend much more time and money, but I felt there was no other choice.

  My first critical challenge was to make the project exciting and attractive to the city so that they’d be inclined to give me the zoning approvals I needed. The key was to find a mutual interest. Deals work best when each side gets something it wants from the other. By luck, I picked up the newspaper one morning soon after purchasing the site, and the answer came to me. It turned out that NBC, which had long had headquarters in Rockefeller Center, was looking to relocate. Edward S. Gordon, a top New York real estate broker, then confirmed this to me. Among the possibilities NBC had in mind was a move across the river to New Jersey, where they stood to save considerable money by virtue of that state’s lower taxes and land costs.

  For the city to lose any large company is obviously bad, but there could hardly be a worse blow than losing NBC. Pure economics are part of the issue. The city’s economic development agency has estimated that if NBC moves, it will cost New York some 4,000 jobs, and perhaps $500 million a year in revenues.

  The psychological loss would be at least as great. It’s one thing to lose a manufacturing company no one has ever heard of. It’s another to lose a company that is a crucial part of what makes New York the media capital of the world. The two other networks, ABC and CBS, now produce nearly all their programs in Los Angeles. NBC still does the Today show, the NBC Nightly News, Late Night with David Letterman, The Cosby Show, Saturday Night Live, and other shows from New York. You can’t put a specific dollar value on the excitement and glamour of being home to the number-one network and its top-rated shows. It’s like trying to assess what New York would be like without the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.

  With the West Side yards, I had something to offer NBC that no other New York developer could possibly match: enough space to build huge single-story studios in the style of Hollywood backlots. NBC was making do at Rockefeller Center with a cramped 1.2 million square feet of space. On my site, I could offer them 2 million square feet, as well as room for future expansion, and I’d still have plenty of room left over to build the rest of the project I had in mind.

  In addition, because my land costs had been so low, I was in a position to offer NBC a price per square foot far below what they might otherwise get in New York. Even at that, to be truly competitive with a New Jersey offer, I knew I’d need a tax abatement from the city. But I also knew that it was in the city’s economic interest to provide incentives for NBC to stay.

  The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. Even if NBC ultimately decided not to move to my site, it was still a perfect place to build television and motion picture studios. With or without NBC, I felt studios would be a good, high-profile business. Before I got a commitment from the network, I decided to design my project around the studio concept. The first step was the name: Television City.

  My second challenge was to find a way to immediately capture the public imagination with my project. The more awareness and excitement I could create early on, the easier it was going to be to attract buyers down the line. A lot of developers build first and promote later, if at all.

  The world’s tallest building was a project I’d considered undertaking even before I purchased the West Side yards. I’ve always loved very tall buildings. I remember coming in from Brooklyn as a kid with my father and pleading with him to take us to see the Empire State Building, which at the time was the world’s tallest building. But then Chicago built the Sears Tower and took away the tide. I loved the challenge of bringing the world’s tallest building back to New York, where I felt it really belonged.

  In a way, I saw the building as a loss leader. When you build any structure higher than about 50 stories, the construction costs escalate geometrically. If maximum profit is your sole motive, you’re far better off putting up three 50-story towers than one 150-story skyscraper. On the other hand, I felt the building would ultimately pay for itself as a tourist attraction and an overall lure. After all, how many millions of tourists have come, as I once did, to see the Empire State Building?

  The next challenge was to find an architect who was as enthusiastic as I was about making such a building the centerpiece of this project. In the end, I interviewed only two architects. The first was Richard Meier, who represents the epitome of the New York architectural establishment. Critics adore Meier, and he has a big following. But what I discovered very quickly is that Meier is not the sort of guy who jumps in with great energy and enthusiasm. He prefers to spend time pondering and analyzing and theorizing. For weeks, I waited for him to bring me a scale model of a plan, or at least some preliminary drawings. Nothing came.

  In the meantime, I also met with Helmut Jahn. I liked him for very different reasons than I liked Meier. Jahn was an outsider: German-born, Chicago-based, in no way part of the New York architectural establishment. He was a bit of a dandy personally, a very good promoter, and he’d gotten very good notices for some very daring work. Among other things, Jahn designed the Xerox Center in downtown Chicago and the high-tech State of Illinois building. At the time I talked with him, he had four major buildings under way in midtown Manhattan.

  What I liked most about Helmut was that he believed, as I did, that big can be beautiful. He liked spectacle. Less than three weeks after we first talked, he arrived in my office with a scale model of a project that incorporated the basic elements I’d told him I wanted, as well as several of his own. In the summer of 1985, I hired Jahn to be the project’s c
hief architect.

  By the fall, we’d batted back and forth a dozen possible designs for the site. Both of us felt that the site was so big and so distinctive that it made no sense to try to create something that blended into the surrounding community. Instead, we saw this as a chance to build a self-contained city, with a look and a character wholly distinct from the disparate surrounding neighborhoods.

  On November 18, we held a press conference to announce our plan for the site. For years, while Macri pursued his Lincoln West plan, the media had ignored him. This time, no fewer than fifty reporters—local and national—showed up for our announcement. I ran down the basic elements. We were calling it Television City, and we hoped to lure NBC as our prime tenant. We intended to build a mixed-use development totaling 18.5 million square feet of commercial, residential, and retail space. The project would include approximately 8,000 residential units, 3.5 million square feet of TV and motion-picture studios and offices, 1.7 million square feet of retail space, 8,500 parking spaces, and almost forty acres of parks and open space, including a thirteen-block waterfront promenade. At the center of the site, we’d erect the world’s tallest building—1,670 feet high—or about 200 feet higher than the Sears Tower in Chicago.

  To me, the beauty of the plan was its simplicity and its grandeur. In addition to the world’s tallest building, we’d put up just seven other buildings—three at the north end, four at the south. A decked-over three-level platform in front of the buildings—including parking and enclosed shopping—would permit us to put a pedestrian promenade on top, at a level slightly higher than the adjacent West Side Highway. The result would be to provide an unimpeded view of the river from virtually any spot on the site. We’d also have enormous space for parks. In all, our proposal was about 50 percent bigger than Macri’s—but even at that, the overall density was lower than that of many smaller developments squeezed onto tiny midtown sites.

  Most reporters, I find, have very little interest in exploring the substance of a detailed proposal for a development. They look instead for the sensational angle. In this case, that may have worked to my advantage. I was prepared for questions about density and traffic and the mix of housing on the site, but instead, all the reporters wanted to talk about was the world’s tallest building. It gave the project an instant mystique. When I got home that night, I switched on the CBS Evening News, expecting to hear news from the opening of the summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Dan Rather was in Geneva anchoring the program, but after summarizing the day’s developments, suddenly he was saying: “In New York City today, developer Donald Trump announced plans to build the world’s tallest building.” It demonstrated how powerful and intoxicating a symbol I’d found for my project.

  The reaction to the world’s tallest building was hardly uniformly positive, but I fully expected that. The controversy actually helped keep the project in the news. Critics insisted that such a building was unnecessary, that people wouldn’t want to live up so high, and that I’d never be able to build it anyway. Newsweek did a full-page story about the building, headlined DONALD TRUMP’S LOFTY AMBITION The New York Times ran an editorial about my plan, which probably added to its credibility. “Time alone,” the editorial said, “can distinguish between great dreams and vain illusions. It’s too early to know which describes Donald Trump’s desire to loom over New York and all other cityscapes with a 150-story tower.”

  My favorite reaction to the world’s tallest building came from columnist George Will. I’ve always liked Will, in part because he’s not afraid to challenge fashion. “Donald Trump is not being reasonable,” Will wrote. “But, then, man does not live by reason alone, fortunately. Trump, who believes that excess can be a virtue, is as American as Manhattan’s skyline, which expresses the Republic’s erupting energies. He says the superskyscraper is necessary because it is unnecessary. He believes architectural exuberance is good for us [and] he may have a point. Brashness, zest and élan are part of this country’s character.”

  My only regret was that George Will didn’t have a seat on the City Planning Commission.

  To my surprise, as time passed, opposition to the world’s tallest building seemed to diminish. Critics focused instead on other aspects of the development, which I’d expected to be less controversial. In particular, the Times architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, launched something of a crusade against Television City. A week after I announced my plans, Goldberger wrote a long piece entitled “Is Trump’s Latest Proposal Just a Castle in the Air?” His major criticism, aside from the fact that he simply doesn’t like tall buildings, was that the project hadn’t been sufficiently integrated into the rest of the neighborhood.

  That, of course, was precisely what I liked best about it. The worst thing I could do, I was convinced, was to build something that blended into the surroundings. Ten years earlier, I’d taken the same position on the rebuilding of the Commodore/Hyatt Hotel. The Grand Central neighborhood was dying, and I felt the only chance at success was to build a spectacular new hotel sheathed in reflective glass, so that it stood apart from the dull, older buildings in the neighborhood. The hotel became an enormous success, and eventually even the critics came around. Reading Goldberger, I felt I was reliving the Commodore experience.

  I felt certain I’d get far better reviews from Paul Goldberger and certain other critics simply by cutting my buildings in half and making them look more like the better-known prewar buildings on the West Side. The problem was that my project would no longer be majestic or distinctive, and it wouldn’t sell. It irritates me that critics, who’ve neither designed nor built anything themselves, are given carte blanche to express their views in the pages of major publications, whereas the targets of their criticism are almost never offered space to respond. Of course, I can be irritated all I want and it won’t do any good. So long as a critic writes for a newspaper like the New York Times, his opinion will continue to carry great weight—whether I like it or not.

  By the spring of 1986, the project we’d proposed was at something of a standstill with city planning. Much of the explanation was that city government itself had become almost completely paralyzed, under the mayoral administration of Ed Koch.

  Koch has achieved something quite miraculous. He’s presided over an administration that is both pervasively corrupt and totally incompetent. Richard Daley, the former mayor of Chicago, managed to survive corruption scandals because at least he seemed able to operate his city efficiently. Under Koch, the problem of the homeless has grown far worse, the vast majority of the city remains unwired for cable, highways have gone unrepaired, subway tunnels have been left unfinished, companies have continued to flee to other cities and city services have deteriorated inexorably.

  Meanwhile, no fewer than a dozen Koch appointees and cohorts have been indicted on charges of bribery, perjury, and accepting kickbacks, or have been forced to resign in disgrace after admitting various ethical transgressions. The criminally indicted include Jay Turoff, the former head of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, John McLaughlin, the hospitals chief, and Anthony Ameruso, the former transportation commissioner. Victor Botnick, one of Koch’s closest personal advisers, quit after it was revealed that he’d lied about his educational background and had taken numerous unnecessary trips under the pretext of doing city business. Bess Myerson, the cultural affairs commissioner and one of Koch’s best friends, resigned in disgrace and was eventually indicted after it came out that she’d given a job to the daughter of a judge she was seeking to influence and had then lied repeatedly about her involvement. Later it came out that Koch ignored evidence that Myerson had acted improperly.

  The irony is that Koch made his reputation by boasting about his integrity and incorruptibility. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that if the people he appoints prove to be corrupt, then in the end he must take the responsibility. To the contrary, at the first hint that any of his friends might be in trouble, Koch can’t run fast enough the other way. For example,
when his close friend Donald Manes, the late Queens borough president, came under investigation and tried to commit suicide, Koch immediately called him “a crook,” even though Manes had yet to be indicted for anything. At the time, Manes was recovering in a hospital. Weeks later, he did succeed in killing himself.

  As for the Koch appointees who managed to avoid criminal indictment, the scandal is their sheer incompetence. Many just lack talent. Others seem to have concluded that the safest approach to protecting their jobs is to stop making decisions of any kind; at least then they can’t be accused of breaking the law. The problem is that when officials in a huge city government stop making decisions, you get the bureaucratic equivalent of gridlock. Dishonesty is intolerable, but inaction and incompetence can be every bit as bad.

  In any case, the city was also stonewalling my project as a means of trying to force me to make changes. In my view it was a form of economic blackmail. So long as I resisted their ideas, they held up my approvals, and my costs mounted.

  Specifically, city planning wanted me to provide more direct access to the waterfront, add more east-west streets connecting the project to the existing city street grid, and move the world’s tallest building south, away from the existing residential neighborhoods. I disagreed with their suggestions, but I also recognize that zoning is always a matter of negotiation. As hard as I push, in the end I’m practical. If it took making some compromises to get the project moving forward, and the result didn’t undermine the project’s economic viability, I was prepared to make the changes.

  In March, I decided to move the location of the world’s tallest building south to 63rd Street. The people at city planning were immediately more enthusiastic. Around the same time, the New York Times had made public an environmental-impact study of the site. Some of its conclusions, I felt, would ultimately help my cause. I’d always believed that any concerns about density were unwarranted. In truth, the West Side of Manhattan is relatively underpopulated. According to the census, the area declined in population from 245,000 in 1960 to 204,000 in 1980. Only 3,100 new apartments went up in the neighborhood between 1980 and 1984. Adding several thousand more hardly represents development run amok.