Donald Trump puts Bill Rancic in charge of Chicago project, his hometown project manager. However, Trump doesn't have the financial leverage yet to make it fly yet. Trump sorta jumps ahead, without getting his money in place. For the first year until 2007, Trump needs a financial guru to get investment bankers and mortgage brokers to take him into the ground breaking milestone. Funny how he puts a shop foreman ahead of a banker in his line up to do the deal. Trump needs Kwame's wall street financial skills more than a gofer to kick his project off the ground.
quote:
Excerpts from NEW YORK TIMES - By Monica Davey and Timothy L. O'Brien - Sat, Apr. 17, 2004
CHICAGO - Some in the real estate industry here have long wondered whether Donald Trump's plans for a glassy, high-end, 90-story hotel and condominium tower along the banks of the Chicago River were reality or just some New Yorker's fantasy of leaving his mark on this town. It seemed fitting, then, when real life and fiction blurred some more, and the Trump International Hotel & Tower found its project manager on the finale of a reality-TV show. Trump named Bill Rancic, who won NBC's "The Apprentice" on Thursday night and had earlier made a living selling cigars on the Web, as "president" of this $700 million project, which still needs financing, final signoffs from City Hall, and demolition of the Chicago Sun-Times building which sits on the site of the tower-to-be.
"This is a large and sophisticated project, and the job is like being the conductor of an orchestra," Bruce R. Cohen, the chief executive of Cohen Financial Capital Management in Chicago, observed. "I don't know how somebody can conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra if they've never gone to a concert before , and if they've never played any of the instruments."
On Friday, Trump said he was still working out precisely what duties Rancic, 32, will hold as president of the project Trump says will become the fourth tallest building in Chicago when it is finished in 2007. The plans were still being worked out. This had all just happened so fast, he said. "It will be an important job," Trump said. "He will be a project manager."...
How better to show the world where they can buy sky-high condominiums in Chicago's downtown than on a national television broadcast with sky-high ratings? "I felt that this was a great opportunity to promote a great project," Trump said. "If I didn't have Bill to do this, I would have lost that opportunity."
This, Trump's first foray into Chicago, began bumpily. He and his partner in the project, Hollinger International Inc., which owns The Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers, announced three years ago that they planned to build a tower on the site of the Sun-Times, a squat and otherwise unimpressive box-like building along the architecturally-rich Chicago River in the heart of downtown...
The project has yet to receive financing, and some here wonder whether it will. Hollinger International is fending off troubles of its own in recent months: Conrad Black, the former chief executive, quit in November after directors questioned millions in payments to him. And Trump presides over an increasingly troubled gambling empire, with his casino holdings stuck in almost $2 billion in bond debt...
On Friday, Molly Morse, a spokeswoman for Hollinger International, said she had no comment on whether the company's current troubles might affect the Chicago project, of which Hollinger would have half ownership, she said. But Trump said the doubters, if there were any, were wasting their time. He said he was discussing the financing with five major institutions "all of which are dying to do the job." And he said that the project had the City Hall approvals it needed. City Hall officials said that the tower had received the most crucial zoning and planning approvals, but that the plan would also require a final administrative signoff from the city once the most detailed drawings are submitted, and Trump applies for a demolition permit and a building permit.
Singer Billy Joel (news), right, has a pointed conversation with Donald Trump at NBC's post-broadcast party at New York's Trump Towers after the finale of 'The Apprentice' early Friday, April 16, 2004. Between them is Trump's girlfriend Melania Knauss.(AP Photo/Emile Nicks)
The Trump Marina Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey is seen in this undated file photo. Photo by Reuters
Casino mogul Donald Trump may have the final word with his television apprentices, but his auditors say Trump's casino company will be in deep trouble without a cash infusion -- which would leave him with a minority holding in the company.
The warning hit the shares of Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts which fell more than 12 percent in March 31, 2004 morning trading.
Mark Cuban duking it out with The Trump on the weblog. Thank you, Donald
quote:
I like Donald Trump. When The Benefactor was announced, he was one of the first people to call. Told me he thought it was a great idea, and I was the right guy to pull it off. Thanks, Donald. Very nice thing to do. What wasn’t nice, was to call The Benefactor a copycat of The Apprentice. A Trump quote from the Chicago Sun-Times in reference to The Benefactor:
quote:
”Because of the success of ‘The Apprentice,’ you’ll have 100 people trying to do shows a little bit like us, but we have a very unique show and I have a very unique guy in [Burnett],” he said. “I’ll tell you something, it’s not going to be easy to duplicate what we’ve done as a team.”
Let’s get some things cleared up in case anyone is confused. The Benefactor is going to be nothing like The Apprentice . Why? Because, Donald, we are not alike in any way. The funny thing is, in some respects, I have you to thank for that.
Back in Jan of 1999, I went to a SuperBowl party at Mar-a-Lago. I was there with some friends who had brought me along. I happened to bump into one of the founders of Yahoo by your pool and was talking to him when you walked up. It was just your typical, short meet-and-greet, but what you said left a lasting impession. You told us that “someday, maybe we could sit up there with the rich people” as you looked up to a 2nd floor patio that had a smattering of people eating their diner. Someday, Donald.
I don’t quite remember all the details, but not long after I got a note from you asking to come meet in New York. Sure, I thought. Why not? We had a good meeting, talked about your internet plans for Trump.com and how it would sell and promote all things Trump. We talked about Broadcast.com. You had a sharp guy there with you. We didn’t do any business, but we gave it a shot. That wasn’t the educational part of the meeting. It was your office. It was covered, literally, every inch of every wall with pictures and magazine covers of you.
I have been in a lot of offices. I have seen pictures with the president, with family, with various famous people, but the over/under was usually 5 pictures, not 100 . At that point in my life I was very well off financially, but I had a lot more paper money from stock in my net worth than cash. Our encounters proved to be a reality check for me. After leaving your office, I promised myself that if I ever got liquid and had an obscene amount of money in the bank, I would make a point not to remind myself and everyone else around me of it every minute of every day — unlike you.
I guess our definition of success is just completely different. I used to wear a suit to work every day. I worked hard so I wouldn’t have to. I bought a big house so I could throw a football and play whiffleball in it, rather than show it off. I don’t play golf, I work out. I don’t have an entourage, I have friends. You talk about how much you are getting paid per episode, I talk about the fact I’m not. You need to make more, I have enough. But those are little things.
Where we are 180 degrees different is how we deal with business partners. You talk about how your problem casinos are just 1 pct of your net worth. I would feel like **** if I had a failing business with partners that were going to lose money and would talk about what it meant to my partners net worth, not my own. Heck, I won’t even let friends invest in any of my companies until I’m certain they will make it. How in the world can you pay yourself while shareholders take a beating?
I like your show. It was entertaining and brought out your personality and approach to the world. So will mine, and I can assure you they are nothing alike. If I wanted to do a show like yours, I would have met with Mark Burnett when he wanted to talk about taking your place after next season.
For a lot of reasons, I didn’t want to write this blog entry. In some ways it’s not fair to you to just lay into you like this. But the point of my blog is to try to tell the story behind the story that is in the paper. You could have said that you didn’t know much about our show and left it at that. You suggested our show was a duplicate of yours. It’s not. It won’t be. I wanted to make that perfectly clear.
04-22-2004 04:47 PM
