Page 86 - Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success

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B IG P ROBLEMS , B IG O PPOR TUNITIES

mind after we’d negotiate, and this was seriously interfering
with any progress. So I called another executive at Hyatt who
suggested I call the guy who really ran the company, Jay Pritzker
of the Pritzker family, who owned a controlling interest in
Hyatt, so I did. He seemed eager to meet me and came to New
York. We made a deal quickly, as equal partners. Hyatt would
manage the hotel after I had it built. I was thrilled. We
announced it to the press in May of 1975.
I still needed to get financing—and a multimillion dollar
tax abatement from the city. At least with a hotel partner, an
architect, and rough cost estimates, I had something substan-
tial to bring with me along with my big ideas. So I hired a real
estate broker who had a lot of experience, and who was in his
sixties. I was only 27 years old at this time, and having a
mature, accomplished presence with me worked to my advan-
tage. We’d be making the pitch together for financing and
we’d make a good pair. That’s a good point to remember—get
the right people to work with you. When dealing with Hyatt,
it was critical that I had gone around the president who was
slowing things down and called Jay Pritzker directly. Now,
finding a dedicated broker who added the right balance to my
image was a smart move. Am I tooting my own horn a bit?
You bet.
Getting financing quickly became a catch-22 situation:
Without financing, the city wasn’t about to consider a tax abate-
ment, and without a tax abatement, the banks weren’t too keen
on financing. It seemed like a brick wall at every turn, so we
decided to change our approach. We appealed to the bankers’
guilt about the decaying city and the fact that they were choos-
ing to look the other way when someone (like me) had a great
idea to change things for the better. I’d be changing a prime
area that was headed toward becoming a slum into a vibrant new
place. How could they not want to be involved? Of course, that
didn’t work.

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