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The Art of the Come-on, Part I Once again, it’s hip to be Trump. The Donald has sat neatly pressed in the walk-in closet of tycoon has beens long enough to be back in style. Trump claims he’s never had a drink, but he seems hungover from the 80s. He’s reinvented himself more times than Madonna and without ever taking off his clothes. For the John Gotti of real estate, any publicity is good publicity. While most billionaires like to keep a low profile and a short hairpiece, Trump has made the transition from developer to brand name. Donald Trump’s number one poster boy is Donald Trump. Just once I’d like to drive up the Lincoln Tunnel corkscrew and not see his twenty-five foot high, air-brushed photo beckoning me to throw away two weeks pay in Atlantic City. Donald J. Trump represents New York to Americans the way George W. Bush represents America to Europeans. Like the Bush administration, the Trump World Tower looks down at the UN. The Tower casts a shadow over New Jersey in the morning and Long Island in the evening, while the tax breaks Trump receives for projects like it cast a shadow over New York City’s budget. Meanwhile, on the West Side, the globe outside the old Gulf & Western building is a bold tribute to remnants of the 1964 World’s Fair in Flushing. Trump claims to build things people like, but if most Manhattanites had the chance, they’d vote him off the island. The crown jewel in Trump’s Manhattan real estate holdings sits along the Hudson River between 59th and 72nd Streets. Back in the early 90s, The Donald was overcome by a brief spell of modesty and political correctness and changed the name from Trump City to Riverside South. Once the permits were all bought and paid for, he strangely recovered and changed it back again. At the moment, six of sixteen originally planned buildings are up, and as long as his GC can refrain from substituting 3,000 for 5,000 psi concrete the way he did on Building C in 1997, they will probably stay up. In a recent Travel Channel 53-minute infomercial for Donald Trump that made the old one for Ginsu knives seem dull, fair, and balanced, it was reported that Trump has begun hiring feng shui consultants. Ironically, feng shui is similar to what the residents of Lincoln Towers screamed as Trump City began to interfere with their sightlines of the Hudson. By all accounts, the project blocks more views than Rosie O’Donnell at a baby shower. For positive energy, West Siders will have to vacate their apartments and buy a pad in Trump City. Unfortunately, at $3,000 a square foot and up, the average long-time Manhattan apartment dweller can just about afford a breakfast nook, and that only with the help of Alan Greenspan. Trump City was big trouble both before it was called Trump City and after. I had the pleasure of working for the Manhattan Borough President’s Office in the early 90s when the Environmental Impact Statement, or E.I.S, was being reviewed. With thousands of pages distributed to hundreds of officials, someone needed to do an E.I.S. on the E.I.S. By the time we were done analyzing the 68-page addendum on traffic flows, West End Avenue was being dug up. Meanwhile, there was a preexisting overcapacity problem at the uptown North River Water Pollution Control Plant which was sure to be exacerbated by Trump and his City. Luckily, in 1994, on April 1st—and we’re not fooling here--someone turned back the sewage flow meters at North River like a used car salesman in a Ford F150. The official explanation for this royal flush was installation of low-flow toilets. They must have all been installed on March 31. Now, in 2004, adding congestion to insult, the City gives a nudge-nudge, wink-wink for the closing of the 72nd Street northbound entrance ramp of the West Side Highway to accommodate Trump City. Closing that ramp is like closing your left and right nostrils. You will live, but not well. Upper West Siders are wondering where they will get on and where Trump gets off. When you do get off the island, most of what’s left of the Trump empire are Castles, Palaces, and Taj Mahals designed to dispose of your disposable income. Casinos run on a mixture of ATM cards, social security checks, and pawned wedding rings, and in a jobless recovery like this one, there is no fuel shortage. Magnates like Carnegie, Hughes, and Rockefeller built railroads, airlines, and oilfields. Trump builds slots. Trump’s vast resources notwithstanding, his resume of significant good works could be spoken without a breath by Brenda Vaccaro doing a Tampax commercial. Even Trump explains that his pro bono re-engineering of Central Park’s troubled Wollman Rink was so that his own kids would have a place to skate. The Donald’s primary public service since 1987 consists of taking out full page ads in the major New York dailies calling for the death penalty for five defendants in the Central Park Jogger case whose convictions were later overturned. Donald J. Trump’s net worth is estimated at two-and-a-half billion dollars. That’s as soft a two-and-a-half billion as you’ll probably ever see. Trump could be ruined in a minute by a few Asian businessmen calling in their loans. Just like this country. Any discount rack Wal-Mart heir could buy and sell Donald Trump ten times over brunch. Walter Annenberg gave away sizeable chunks of that figure on rainy weekends. Bill Gates has donated $100 million to fight AIDS in Africa. Donald Trump’s contribution to the war on HIV consists of having his supermodel love interests tested before bedding them. Go ask the Pope if buying on margin and reselling at a profit to foreign investors constitutes tithing. Click here to rant back. |