Page 51 - Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success

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T R UM P: N E V E R G I V E U P

changing it to say, “You can’t build a skyscraper without breaking a
few heads.”
Nothing was easy from day one. To begin the saga, it took
me almost three years to even get a response from the man who
controlled the land I wanted to buy. I made calls and wrote let-
ter after letter. I learned a lot about persistence, but I also
learned that if you are passionate about something, receiving
zero encouragement still won’t discourage you. I just plain
wouldn’t give up. When the site eventually became available, I
realized that my letters had helped.
The site where I wanted to build Trump Tower was adjacent
to Tiffany’s. Further down the line, I needed to convince
Tiffany’s to let me buy their air rights—their right to build a
tall skyscraper on top of their store—for $5 million. That would
prevent anyone from being able to rip down the Tiffany’s build-
ing and put up a tower that would block my views. I would be
able to build a tower with soaring picture windows versus tiny
ones, an aesthetic consideration that was of utmost importance.
In order to get the zoning variance I needed from the City of
New York, I had to know whether I’d have the air rights. The
man in charge of this told me he liked my idea and my price, but
that he was going on vacation for a month and would get back to
me. In a month’s time, I would have done a lot of zoning work as
well as architectural work, and if I wasn’t sure of getting the air
rights, I would be wasting a lot of time and work. Fortunately for
me, I was dealing with a real gentleman, Walter Hoving, and he
told me that his word was good. Period. In fact, he seemed
insulted that I would question his decision and his word. Once in
awhile, but not often, you run into someone as honorable as that.
Now that I had Tiffany’s air rights, I needed one more par-
cel, which was a tiny site along 57th Street adjacent to Tiffany’s.
This was required by another New York City zoning regulation:
You have to have a minimum of 30 feet of open space, like a rear
yard, behind any building. Without this piece of property, I

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