2018/3/2

Day02

Trump Never Give Up

Chapter 04

IS THIS A BLIP OR A CATASTROPHE ?

Be Prepared for Things That Happen Outside Your Game Plan

THESECOND-TALLEST BUILDING IN NORTH AMERICA

We’ve all heard of the Chicago Sun-Times. What you might not know is that they had the best site in the city, right on the river at North Wabash, next to the landmark Wrigley Building. I wanted it for my Trump International Hotel & Tower/Chicago, and I got it. It’s a fantastic location, and if you visit Chicago and take the architectural boat tour of the city, you will see what I mean. When the building comes into sight, it can take your breath away, and that’s whether it’s windy or not—even though it’s only partially finished and won’t be completed until 2009. Because of the fantastic asymmetrical shape, the building dominates the view from the Michigan Avenue Bridge and nearby West Wacker Drive. If you visit it, you’ll see why we’ve spent so much time and effort on this building.

Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago

My plan for the Chicago building began in 2000, and it was announced that it would be the world’s tallest building. I was very excited about this prospect and knew I could get it done, and get it done brilliantly. However, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I had the plans scaled down. Much as I wanted to build the tallest building, I don’t think making a building a potential target is a smart idea. So we changed the plan a bit.

That was the beginning of a few changes, in fact. We had Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as the building’s architect, and they built over 50 models before we decided on something we all liked. Then this design was further refined after comments from the Department of Planning, community groups, and architectural critics of Chicago, who were a big consideration. The revisions were done in 2002, and it was approved. Later, in 2004 we changed 10 floors from offices into hotel rooms and condominiums, based on marketing considerations. We finally began construction on March 17, 2005, five years after I announced the project. You can see by the time line that things don’t happen overnight, even if your name is Donald Trump.

This building will be a big beauty. It will be 2.7 million square feet, 92 stories, and will incorporate a health club and spa, a five-star luxury hotel, condominiums, executive lounges, retail shops, and garages. The penthouses will occupy the three top floors. It will be the tallest concrete structure and the second tallest building in North America (after the Sears Tower). The hotel is slated to open in December 2007, with the entire building to be finished by the spring of 2009. The cost will be around $800 million. This is a huge project.

THE  LOW  POINT

There have been some problems—some big ones, naturally. Three months after we began foundation construction, we dis-covered that water had begun leaking into the building site from the Chicago River. Since the foundation was being laid below the level of the river, it was always a possibility that the old river bulkhead that was already in place wouldn’t hold. However, that wasn’t the problem—water was coming in through a corner where the bulkhead and the Wabash Avenue Bridge meet. This could be a serious problem—so we dealt with it seriously, and it was taken care of. After a while, it is possible to take problems in stride—if you have the right attitude and know what you are doing.

Another element of the building that took an odd turn was the structural design. In the original concept, the base and first 14 floors of the building were designed to be a structural steel frame, with a reinforced concrete building above. Very late in the design process, as we were bidding the work, we found that there was a huge spike in the world commodity prices for steel due to industrial growth in China absorbing so much of the world’s supply. We went back to the drawing board and redesigned the building as all concrete, saving several million dollars in the process and simplifying the construction logistics.

We also had to consider that the rock caissons (supports) for the tower, which are sunk into the bedrock, make a lot of noise during construction and we hoped that our Chicago neighbors could put up with 241 of them being pounded into the bedrock. About a fourth of the supports had to go down 110 feet into the limestone, so you can see that this alone was a tremendous proj-ect. We got it done and didn’t make too many enemies in the process. Because each of the columns carries 14 million pounds, the support system has to be carefully and meticulously thought out and implemented.

We had another problem much earlier in the game when we lost our partner, Conrad Black and the Chicago Sun-Times, to a corporate scandal and indictment (and I hope he hangs tough, he’s been through a lot). We made a deal to buy out their inter-est in the project. More recently, we lost our architect at Skid-more, Owings & Merrill when he resigned from the company. These can be big losses, but you know what? We just dealt with them and kept moving forward. We are prepared for problems along the way, and like good soldiers we just keep on going. As the general, I have to admit and take responsibility for the fact that things work out as they will, no matter how prepared you are, but we still do our best to plan and focus—then have the resiliency to immediately regroup from setbacks. Our plans and our resolve were strong enough to continue our work without giving in to any interruptions.

There are bright sides to things, too. For example, we saved over a million dollars by reusing the old river bulkhead from the Sun-Times building. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had less site cleanup because the newspaper had switched to soy-based ink from petroleum-based ink back in the 1970s, so there was much less ground pollution than we had expected. Sometimes when you start thinking about all the problems you’ve got, it’s a good idea to focus a little on some of the positives in the situation.

COACH TRUMP 

MAKE IT HAPPEN IN YOUR LIFE

When things happen that might be outside the outline of your game plan, ask yourself, “Is this a blip or is it a catastrophe?” We had some blips along the way with our Chicago building, and we’ll probably have a couple more, but it’s still been a fantastic development and experience. Will you have problems when you tackle something big? Yes. Will you let them derail you? You absolutely should not.

Let your passion for your work carry you through all the setbacks they can throw at you. Be it wind, water, resignations, scandals, whatever—you can prevail. Your insurance for overcoming these perils is free—it’s called never giving up!

After a while, it is possible to take problems in stride—if you have the right attitude and know what you are doing. Have the resilience to immediately regroup and change course if you need to after you hit a setback.

Chapter 05

I LOVE A GOOD FIGHT

The Trump SoHo Hotel Condominium

SoHo has been a chic neighborhood for some years now, and I waited a long time to enter it as a developer. I knew it’d be a fight to get anything going there because most of SoHo is made up of low-rise buildings and is subject to strict zoning laws. I doubt if any of you would think of or refer to SoHo as a manufacturing center, but for historical reasons, that’s how much of it is zoned. So, building a residential structure in the locations I wanted is not permitted. However, you can build a hotel there. When I learned that, I decided to build a condominium hotel in SoHo—a tall one.

SoHo is considered a mecca for art, film, and fashion buffs, with over 250 art galleries, 100 designer stores, and over 200 restaurants. In other words, it’s a great area to visit and an even greater area to stay. I believed SoHo deserved—and was ready for—a first-rate, twenty-first-century hotel.

The 45-story, $450 million tower I hoped to build with my partners, Bayrock Group and the Sapir Organization, was, of course, met with a fury of opposition from local community activists and the politicians that represent them. I wouldn’t let that stop us. I announced my intention on June 6, 2006, on The Apprentice. Despite everything that ensued, on May 8, 2007, I’m pleased to report, we were approved by city officials to erect this condo hotel. Along the way, we had a few problems to deal with, which was not a huge surprise.

The biggest obstacle was the height of the building. SoHo is a low-rise neighborhood, and this project would significantly alter the skyline. It would be the tallest building between mid-town and the financial district. It’s not that SoHo isn’t zoned for tall buildings—it is—but none have ever been built. We wanted to change that. There were “air rights” laws—the right to build higher—already in place that made it perfectly legal to build a high-rise. In fact, we added several floors to the hotel’s design by buying the air rights from the neighboring properties.

Trump SoHo Hotel Condominium New York

Although we had the right to build a hotel with the height we wanted, the fact that no one had done it before worked against us. This project was the first time New York City’s Department of Buildings had to consider a condominium hotel in one of New York City’s manufacturing districts, which do not permit residential use. The City’s antiquated zoning laws and the local residents, together, created formidable obstacles.

New York City (unlike many other major U.S. destination cities) had never before been confronted with a hotel comprised entirely of condominiums. The key zoning consideration for the City was that the units would not be residences for the owners, but would be for transient occupancy. That meant we had to prove to the Department of Buildings that Trump SoHo would not be a residential building, but a building for short-term stays—and I firmly believed we could convince the City officials of this.

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 sup-pressed 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. Addition-ally, 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 fol-lowed. 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.

Chapter 06

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 MaraLago 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 host 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.