Alex, by contrast, was formerly a city planner himself and he’s almost a legend in that office. He’s also the guy who designed Battery Park City, which has gotten great press. Politically, he’s a much better choice than Helmut Jahn, and I’m a very practical guy.
We’ve been meeting like this every week for the past couple of months to hash out a broad plan, including where to locate the residential buildings, the streets, the parks, and the shopping mall. Today Alex has brought preliminary drawings of the layout we’ve agreed on. At the southern end are the prospective NBC studios, adjacent to the world’s tallest building. Then, heading north, there are the residential buildings, facing east over a boulevard, and west over a huge eight-block-long shopping mall and out at the river. Every apartment has a great view, which I believe is critical.
I am very happy with the new layout, and Alex seems happy too. I happen to think that tall buildings are what will make this project special, but I’m not naïve about zoning. Eventually, I know, we’re going to have to make some concessions. On the other hand, if the city won’t approve something I think makes sense economically, I’ll just wait for the next administration and try again. This site is only going to get more valuable.
6:00 P.M. I excuse myself, because I am due at an early dinner, and it’s not the kind to be late for. Ivana and I have been invited, by John Cardinal O’Connor, to have dinner at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
7:00 P.M. No matter whom you’ve met over the years, there is something incredible about sitting down to dinner with the cardinal and a half dozen of his top bishops and priests in a private dining room at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s hard not to be a little awed.
We talk about politics, the city, real estate, and a half dozen other subjects, and it’s a fascinating evening. As we leave, I tell Ivana how impressed I am with the cardinal. He’s not only a man of great warmth, he’s also a businessman with great political instincts.
FRIDAY
6:30 A.M. I’m leafing through the New York Times when I come to a huge picture of the concrete being poured onto Wollman Rink. It’s on the front page of the second section. This story just won’t quit.
* * *
9:15 A.M. We meet with the city on the West Side yards project. Almost everyone from yesterday’s meeting is there, and we are joined by four city planners, including Rebecca Robinson and Con Howe, who are directly in charge of evaluating our project.
Alex does the presentation, and he’s very good. Mostly he emphasizes the things we know the city is going to like—the public parks, the easy access to the waterfront, the ways we’ve devised to move traffic in and out. The only time the density issue comes up—how tall the buildings will be—Alex just says we’re still working it out.
When it’s over, we all agree it went very well.
10:30 A.M. I go back to my office for a meeting to discuss progress on construction at Trump Parc, the condominium I’m building out of the steel shell of the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel on Central Park South. It’s an incredible location, and the building we’re redoing will be a great success.
The meeting includes Frank Williams, my architect on the project, Andrew Weiss, the project manager, and Blanche Sprague, an executive vice president, who is in charge of sales. Frank, who is very soft-spoken, is a fine architect. Blanchette—my nickname for her—is a classic. She’s got a mouth that won’t quit, which is probably why she’s so good at sales. I like to tell her that she must be a very tough woman to live with. The truth is I get a great kick out of her.
We start by talking about what color to use on the frames of the windows. Details like these make all the difference in the look and ambience of a building. After almost a half hour, we finally agree on a light beige that will blend right into the color of the stone. I happen to like earth tones. They are richer and more elegant than primary colors.
11:00 A.M. Frank Williams leaves, and we turn to a discussion of the demolition work at Trump Parc. Andy tells me it’s not finished, and that the contractor has just given us a $175,000 bill for “extras.” Extras are the costs a contractor adds to his original bid every time you request any change in the plan you initially agreed on. You have to be very rough and very tough with most contractors or they’ll take the shirt right off your back.
I pick up the phone and dial the guy in charge of demolition at Trump Parc. “Steve,” I say when I get him, “this is Donald Trump. Listen, you’ve got to get your ass moving and get finished. You’re behind. I want you to get personally involved in this.” He starts to give me explanations but I cut him off. “I don’t want to know. I just want you to get the job done and get out. And listen, Steve, you’re killing me on these extras. I don’t want you to deal with Andy anymore on the extras. I want you to deal with me personally. If you try screwing me on this job, you won’t be getting a second chance. I’ll never hire you again.”
My second concern is the laying of floors. I ask Andy for the number of our concrete guy. “Okay,” I say, only half joking, “I’m going to take my life in my hands now.” Concrete guys can be extremely rough. I get the number-two guy on the line. “Look,” I say to him, “your boss wanted this contract very badly. I was set to give it to someone else, but he told me he’d do a great job. I walked the site yesterday, and the patches you’re making aren’t level with the existing concrete. In some places, they’re as much as a quarter-inch off.”
The guy doesn’t have any response, so I keep talking. “Nobody has the potential to give you more work in the future than Trump. I’m going to be building when everyone else has gone bust. So do me a favor. Get this thing done right.”
This time the guy has a response. “Every guy on the job is a pro,” he says. “We’ve given you our best men, Mr. Trump.”
“Good,” I say. “Call me later and let me know how you’re doing.”
12:00 noon Alan Greenberg calls to tell me that Holiday has gone ahead and enacted some “poison pill” provisions that will weigh the company down with debt and make it much less attractive as a takeover target. I’m not worried. No poison pill is going to keep me from going after Holiday Inn, if that’s what I decide I want to do.
The market is still taking a drubbing. It was off 80 points yesterday, and it’s down another 25 today. But Holiday is off only a point. Alan tells me that we’ve now bought almost 5 percent of the company.
* * *
12:15 P.M. Blanche stays on after Andy leaves to get me to choose a print advertisement for Trump Parc She shows me a half dozen choices, and I don’t like any of them. She is furious.
Blanche wants to use a line drawing that shows the building and its panoramic views of Central Park. “I like the idea of a line drawing,” I tell her. “But I don’t like these. Also, I want a drawing that shows more of the building. Central Park is great, but in the end I’m not selling a park, I’m selling a building and apartments.”
12:30 P.M. Norma comes in, carrying a huge pile of forms I have to sign as part of my application for a Nevada gaming license. While I’m signing, Norma asks who I want to use as character references. I think for a minute, and tell her to put down General Pete Dawkins, a great Army football hero, a terrific guy, and a good friend who’s now an investment banker at Shearson; Benjamin Hollaway, chairman and CEO of Equitable Real Estate Group; and Conrad Stephenson of Chase Manhattan Bank.
“Also,” I tell Norma, “put down John Cardinal O’Connor.”
12:45 P.M. Ivana rings. She’s in the office and wants me to go with her to see another school we’re considering sending our daughter to next fall. “Come on, Donald,” she says. “You haven’t got anything else to do.” Sometimes I think she really believes it.
“Actually, honey, I’m a little busy right now,” I tell her. It doesn’t work. Three minutes later she’s in my office, tugging at my sleeve. I finish signing the forms, and we go.
2:30 P.M. Bill Fugazy calls. I like to call him Willie the Fug, but he doesn’t seem to appreciate it. Fugazy’s business
is limousines, but he really should have been a broker. The guy knows everyone. He’s one of Lee Iacocca’s best friends, and he’s the person who recommended to the cardinal that he meet with me to discuss real estate and get to know each other better.
Fugazy asks me how dinner went last night at St. Pat’s and I tell him it was great. Before we hang up, we set a golf date for the weekend.
2:45 P.M. John D’Alessio, the construction manager on my triplex in Trump Tower, comes by to discuss the progress. He is carrying drawings. Except for the third floor, where the kids are, and the roof, where someday I’m going to build a park sixty-eight stories up, I’ve gutted the whole apartment. In truth, I’ve gone a little overboard. First of all, I practically doubled the size of what I have by taking over the adjacent apartment. What I’m doing is about as close as you’re going to get, in the twentieth century, to the quality of Versailles. Everything is made to order. For example, we had the finest craftsmen in Italy hand-carve twenty-seven solid marble columns for the living room. They arrived yesterday, and they’re beautiful. I can afford the finest workmanship, and when it comes to my own apartment, I figure, why spare any expense? I want the best, whatever it takes.
I look over the drawings with John and mark up a few changes. Then I ask him how the job is going. “Not bad,” he said. “We’re getting there.”
“Well, push, John,” I say. “Push hard.”
3:30 P.M. A Greek shipping magnate is on the line. “How’s the shipping business?” I ask. He tells me he has a deal he’d like to discuss. He doesn’t say what it is, but with certain people you don’t ask. If it wasn’t big, I assume he wouldn’t waste my time. We set a date.
4:00 P.M. I get a call from a guy who sells and leases corporate airplanes. I’ve been considering buying a G-4, the jet that most corporations use. I tell the guy on the phone that I’m still interested in a plane, but that he should keep his eye out for a 727, which is what I really want.
4:30 P.M. Nick Ribis calls from Australia. He tells me things are going very well on our negotiations to be designated builder and operator of the world’s largest casino. Nick fills me in on the details and says that we should know more by the following Monday. “Sounds great,” I tell him. “Call me before you fly back.”
4:45 P.M. Norma tells me that David Letterman, the talk-show host, is downstairs in the atrium of Trump Tower, filming a day in the life of two out-of-town tourists. He’d like to know if they could stop up and say hello.
I almost never stay up late enough to watch Letterman, but I know he’s hot. I say sure. Five minutes later, Letterman walks in, along with a cameraman, a couple of assistants, and a very nice-looking married couple from Louisville. We kid around a little, and I say what a great town I think Louisville is—maybe we should all go in together on a deal there. Letterman asks me how much an apartment goes for in Trump Tower. I tell him that he might be able to pick up a one-bedroom for $1 million.
“Tell me the truth,” Letterman says after a few minutes of bantering. “It’s Friday afternoon, you get a call from us out of the blue, you tell us we can come up. Now you’re standing here talking to us. You must not have much to do.”
“Truthfully, David,” I say, “you’re right. Absolutely nothing to do.”
2
TRUMP CARDS
The Elements of the Deal
MY STYLE of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.
More than anything else, I think deal-making is an ability you’re born with. It’s in the genes. I don’t say that egotistically. It’s not about being brilliant. It does take a certain intelligence, but mostly it’s about instincts. You can take the smartest kid at Wharton, the one who gets straight A’s and has a 170 IQ, and if he doesn’t have the instincts, he’ll never be a successful entrepreneur.
Moreover, most people who do have the instincts will never recognize that they do, because they don’t have the courage or the good fortune to discover their potential. Somewhere out there are a few men with more innate talent at golf than Jack Nicklaus, or women with greater ability at tennis than Chris Evert or Martina Navratilova, but they will never lift a club or swing a racket and therefore will never find out how great they could have been. Instead, they’ll be content to sit and watch stars perform on television.
When I look back at the deals I’ve made—and the ones I’ve lost or let pass—I see certain common elements. But unlike the real estate evangelists you see all over television these days, I can’t promise you that by following the precepts I’m about to offer you’ll become a millionaire overnight. Unfortunately, life rarely works that way, and most people who try to get rich quick end up going broke instead. As for those among you who do have the genes, who do have the instincts, and who could be highly successful, well, I still hope you won’t follow my advice. Because that would just make it a much tougher world for me.
Think Big
I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.
My father built low-income and middle-income buildings in Brooklyn and Queens, but even then, I gravitated to the best location. When I was working in Queens, I always wanted Forest Hills. And as I grew older, and perhaps wiser, I realized that Forest Hills was great, but Forest Hills isn’t Fifth Avenue. And so I began to look toward Manhattan, because at a very early age, I had a true sense of what I wanted to do.
I wasn’t satisfied just to earn a good living. I was looking to make a statement. I was out to build something monumental—something worth a big effort. Plenty of other people could buy and sell little brownstones, or build cookie-cutter red-brick buildings. What attracted me was the challenge of building a spectacular development on almost one hundred acres by the river on the West Side of Manhattan, or creating a huge new hotel next to Grand Central Station at Park Avenue and 42nd Street.
The same sort of challenge is what attracted me to Atlantic City. It’s nice to build a successful hotel. It’s a lot better to build a hotel attached to a huge casino that can earn fifty times what you’d ever earn renting hotel rooms. You’re talking a whole different order of magnitude.
One of the keys to thinking big is total focus. I think of it almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality I’ve noticed in many highly successful entrepreneurs. They’re obsessive, they’re driven, they’re single-minded and sometimes they’re almost maniacal, but it’s all channeled into their work. Where other people are paralyzed by neurosis, the people I’m talking about are actually helped by it.
I don’t say this trait leads to a happier life, or a better life, but it’s great when it comes to getting what you want. This is particularly true in New York real estate, where you are dealing with some of the sharpest, toughest, and most vicious people in the world. I happen to love to go up against these guys, and I love to beat them.
Protect the Downside and the Upside Will Take Care of Itself
People think I’m a gambler. I’ve never gambled in my life. To me, a gambler is someone who plays slot machines. I prefer to own slot machines. It’s a very good business being the house.
It’s been said that I believe in the power of positive thinking. In fact, I believe in the power of negative thinking. I happen to be very conservative in business. I always go into the deal anticipating the worst. If you plan for the worst—if you can live with the worst—the good will always take care of itself. The only time in my life I didn’t follow that rule was with the USFL. I bought a losing team in a losing league on a long shot. It almost worked, through our antitrust suit, but when it didn’t, I had no fallback. The point is that you can’t be too greedy. If you go fo
r a home run on every pitch, you’re also going to strike out a lot. I try never to leave myself too exposed, even if it means sometimes settling for a triple, a double, or even, on rare occasions, a single.
One of the best examples I can give is my experience in Atlantic City. Several years ago, I managed to piece together an incredible site on the Boardwalk. The individual deals I made for parcels were contingent on my being able to put together the whole site. Until I achieved that, I didn’t have to put up very much money at all.
Once I assembled the site, I didn’t rush to start construction. That meant I had to pay the carrying charges for a longer period, but before I spent hundreds of millions of dollars and several years on construction, I wanted to make sure I got my gaming license. I lost time, but I also kept my exposure much lower.
When I got my licensing on the Boardwalk site, Holiday Inns came along and offered to be my partner. Some people said, “You don’t need them. Why give up fifty percent of your profits?” But Holiday Inns also offered to pay back the money I already had in the deal, to finance all the construction, and to guarantee me against losses for five years. My choice was whether to keep all the risk myself, and own 100 percent of the casino, or settle for a 50 percent stake without putting up a dime. It was an easy decision.
Barron Hilton, by contrast, took a bolder approach when he built his casino in Atlantic City. In order to get opened as quickly as possible, he filed for a license and began construction on a $400 million facility at the same time. But then, two months before the hotel was scheduled to open, Hilton was denied a license. He ended up selling to me at the last minute, under a lot of pressure, and without a lot of other options. I renamed the facility Trump’s Castle and it is now one of the most successful hotel-casinos anywhere in the world.
Trump Page 4