Page 52 - Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success

trum_c07.qxd 11/30/07 3:34 PM Page 31

E XPECT P ROBLEMS AND Y OU ’ LL B E R EADY

would have had to cut the rear yard out of the building we’d
already designed.
It turned out that this piece of property was owned by
Leonard Kandell, who was as honorable as Walter Hoving. How-
ever, he didn’t want to part with his land. He wasn’t a seller, and
he wouldn’t budge. Until one day I found a bonus in the paper-
work for my Tiffany deal. It included a clause that gave Tiffany
an option to buy the Kandell property within a certain time
frame because it was adjacent to Tiffany. Maybe something
could be worked out with Kandell after all.
By now I realized what I was trying to do was never going to
be easy. Every door required a lot of work just to get it cracked
open to begin with. Robert Moses’ quote would surface again in
my mind and I would just keep going. It helps to expect prob-
lems because then, in a sense, you’re ready for them and not
thrown off balance. It’s good to remind yourself of that—daily,
if necessary.
So then, I had to go back to Walter Hoving and ask him if I
could buy his option on Leonard Kandell’s property as part of
my deal with Tiffany’s. I knew he had no interest in buying
Kandell’s property anyway. Walter agreed. However, Leonard
said the option belonged to Tiffany and was not transferable. He
might have been right. It was also possible that if I sued over
this question, I might win the right to exercise the option.
So I explained the possibility of litigation to Leonard, and
in less than half an hour, we managed to make a deal that was
good for both of us: I would withdraw my exercise of the option,
and Leonard would agree to extend my lease on his site from 20
years to 100 years, which was enough time to make it finance-
able. Also in the lease, he eliminated any prohibitions against
rezoning. Leonard and I remained friends, and I was allowed to
continue on my quest to build Trump Tower.
I still didn’t have a final contract with Genesco, the com-
pany that owned Bonwit Teller, the store that was sitting on the

31