Posted on 02/14/2016 9:03:20 PM PST by GilGil
Long before Donald Trump stamped his name in gold on buildings around the world, posted snarky midnight tweets and joined the race for the White House, he was New York’s most important and bravest real-estate developer.
Whatever you think about his political views or crazy campaign, Trump doesn’t get enough credit for being a transformative planner who is in love with the city.
No matter how many times they watch “Taxi Driver,†younger New Yorkers and older ones who arrived recently have no idea of what the city was actually like in the mid-1970s through the mid-’90s. Notwithstanding Studio 54 and a short-lived Wall Street boom, the metropolis was reeling. Rampant street crime, AIDS, corporate flight and physical decay brought confidence to an all-time low.
Trump waded into a landscape of empty Fifth Avenue storefronts, the dust-bowl mugging ground that was Central Park and a Wall Street area seemingly on its last legs as companies moved out.
Except in Battery Park City, which was then as remote as an offshore island, few other developers built anything but plain-vanilla office and apartment buildings. Trump — almost by force of will — rode to the rescue. Expressing rare faith in the future, he was instrumental in kick-starting the regeneration of neighborhoods and landmarks almost given up for dead.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
TTTT
Very well said!
Much of Trump’s success is based on first vision, and then (often preemptive) mitigation of risk.
There is a difference between risk aversion and risk mitigation.
Risk aversion says play it safe.
Risk mitigation says eliminate or soften opportunities to fail thereby leaving open higher chance of success, often with multiple paths to a ‘win’.
Some people see opportunities to fail and run away. Trump sees opportunities to fail and attacks them, eliminates or diminishes them, and wins where others were afraid to even try.
Try this next time you do a ‘pros and cons’ side by side. Get them all out, fold the paper, and then start analyzing the cons seriously for how they can be avoided, eliminated, softened, or even turned into a pro. Then look at the pros and make your decision.
Wow. And this from a paper that ran “Lady and the Trump” bashing him and Sarah Palin on the frontpage.
At least someone there is willing to give him his credit.
Trump can jerk and clean 450 pounds.
He did it all and never took a dime.
I was born in NYC in the late 1950s, it was basically the perfect city until 1968, it seems like in 1968 they locked every door and it was downhill from there.
My personal low point was walking with a good friend at 9 o’clock on a Saturday night on St. Mark’s place. We were streetwise gals to be sure and we were just clinging to each other. It seemed like we were just surrounded by vagrants and criminals, a million unkempt “vendors” selling junk off of blankets and every single item, we were 100% sure, had been stolen. That had to be in the late 80s but I can’t remember if it was before or after my kid was born.
Donald Trump may have contributed to New York in a good way, maybe even a great way, but Donald Trump did not save New York.
One man alone saved New York and that was Rudy Giuliani.
He had a street named after him on the upper east side for a while, but he insisted it be renamed. Too many people were getting hurt....
For you see, no one crosses Donald Trump and lives.
I needed a laugh tonight.
Giuliani really was a stud. Using RICO, he and Chertoff? took down all four of the crime families, with the Columbo family pretty much taking themselves out. They were infiltrated by Donnie Brasco/Joe Pistone, right?
Didn’t Trump give money to the current mayor and isn’t he kind of the anti-Rudy?
Bonano, not Colombo
This is exactly why Trump will win in NYC. I was accused of being a Trump bot when I pointed this out on another thread; however the reason for the statement was due to the facts stated in the article concerning Trump’s NYC history and love for the city.
I was already aware of this, having just read a book about it. The book is recent (can’t remember the title) and was written by an unfriendly-to- Trump liberal source however, the facts stood for themselves. Trump’s love for and successful efforts to revitalize NYC were apparent despite the attempt to spin him into a bad light.
To net it out; Trump will win NYC and the facts about Trump’s construction history in NYC backing up this statement have actual substance.
The blue collar New Yorker’s will see this - or do they want the Arkansas carpetbagger or the Vermont communist? Some will of course, but I am betting that most will vote Trump. Not the elite upper West siders perhaps, but the union blue collar types ....
DeBlasio? Yes, I suppose anti-Rudy could describe him. Also stinking communist. As to whether or not Trump gave him money I don’t know. But I get it that sometimes business people feel they have to give to both sides, just to keep the wheels moving, so that alone doesn’t freak me out too much. In other words I don’t see that kind of contribution as indicating true support.
What bothers me about Trump is that I find it very hard to take him as a serious person and I don’t feel like I know what he would do if elected.
I could see him getting in there and saying: we’re going to do A! B! C! and the congress or whoever saying, hmmm, no, we don’t want to. And Trump saying: OK, the heck with it.
But I will vote for whoever the R candidate is, if we nominate Godzilla, he’s got my vote.
I don’t really know about all that Mafia stuff, but I do know Giuliani went after them. I remember esp. him going after them in the Fulton Fish Market (which was well known as being mob controlled) and saying: people don’t realize they are basically paying a “mob tax” on fish all the time. That was an argument against how many NYers felt that Mafia activity was basically “victimless”, at least as long as you weren’t a hooker or a drug addict or another mobster.
But it was the way he cracked down on street crime that was really a miracle. And the fact that he did it while every day the NY Times et al. were calling him a fascist. Everything the media did to George W. Bush later they did to Giuliani.
And he never let it stop him at all.
I appreciate that there are issues with his social views but I remain disappointed at his failed run for President. There’s be no ISIS chopping off heads or setting people on fire if Giuliani had gotten in there, of that I just feel sure.
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