Page 100 - Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success

trum_c18.qxd 11/30/07 3:59 PM Page 79

A S IX -Y EAR P ROJECT IN S IX M ONTHS

Wollman Rink

scene to look out and see it filled with ice skaters—except that
for six years it was closed, and to look at the empty rink for six
winters in a row finally got to me. This is a story about doing
something that wasn’t going to be easy, in fact it was deliber-
ately walking into a mess, but the end result would be a happy
story for a lot of citizens in New York City as well as thousands
of visitors. It was a labor of love that also turned out to be one
of my favorite accomplishments.
New York City’s management fiasco with the renovation of
Wollman Rink was an absolute classic. After six years of renova-
tions to the tune of $12 million, the rink was still closed. Then
the city announced in 1986 that the entire process of renovation
was starting over again, from scratch. I could bear it no more
and wrote to then Mayor Koch offering to construct a brand-

79