Page 53 - 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

property where I wanted to build Trump Tower. We’d managed
to keep the whole deal completely secret and were expecting to
sign contracts in a couple of months. Word began to leak out
and suddenly Genesco was inundated with interested buyers,
among them Arab investors with oil money. Not surprisingly,
Genesco began to try to get out of the deal.
However, I had fortunately gotten a one-page letter of intent
from Jack Hanigan, who had been brought in by Genesco to
save them when they were having difficulties. He had been
receiving those letters I’d been writing for three years. I let
Genesco know that I would litigate and hold up the sale of the
Bonwit property for years if they didn’t honor our deal. I wasn’t
even sure if the letter would be legally binding, but I could
prove to be a nuisance to them if they reneged.
Shortly after this, I got a call from the New York Times who
had heard that I was about to make a deal with Genesco to buy
the Bonwit building. We had kept this quiet but I realized I
should take a risk, especially considering that Genesco was fal-
tering on their side of the deal. So I told the reporter that we’d
reached an agreement, and I was planning on building a new
tower on the Bonwit site. Therefore, the store would be closed,
most likely, in a few months.
The article appeared the next morning, and I was hoping it
would put some pressure on Genesco. What happened is some-
thing I hadn’t counted on—as soon as the article appeared, all of
Bonwit’s employees went over to Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth
Avenue, and Bloomingdale’s to hunt for new jobs, and as a result,
Bonwit was having trouble running their store. Five days later, I
had the contract signed with Genesco.
We hadn’t even gotten close to construction yet. This is a
good example of the perseverance you need and some of the
obstacles that can arise when you are trying to do something
great. Sometimes it’s hard even when you’re trying to do some-
thing far smaller than a skyscraper. For those of you who think I

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