Donald Trump in The Art of the Deal
“For nearly seven years I watched from the window of my office as the city tried to rebuild Wollman Ice-Skating Rink in Central Park. At the end of that time, millions of dollars had been wasted and the job was farther from being completed than when the work began. They were all set to rip out the concrete and start over when I finally couldn’t stand it anymore, and I offered to do it myself. The job took 4 months to complete at a fraction of the city’s cost.
I discovered that the city’s incompetence had extended to every imaginable detail, large and small. One week after I’d made my deal to take over rebuilding the rink, a city report was released on mistakes made over the past six years. The report provided an astounding chronology of sloppiness, indecision, incompetence, and stupidity, but it came to absolutely no conclusions about who was responsible for the fiasco and what could be done to avoid such failures in the future. If it weren’t so pathetic, it would have been almost comical.
Repairs on the Wollman Rink in Central Park, built in 1955, were started in 1980 by a general contractor unconnected to Trump. Despite an expected 2 1⁄2-year construction schedule, the repairs were not completed by 1986. Trump took over the project, completed it in three months for $750,000 less than the initial budget of $1.95 million, and operated the rink for one year with all profits going to charity in exchange for the rink’s concession rights.”
“Once upon a time there was an ice skating rink in Central Park that could no longer make ice. No one could figure out how to fix the skating rink. Years went by and millions of dollars were spent and still no ice. One day a white knight wearing a bright red tie showed up and said: ‘ Let there be ice!’ Four months later there was ice. When asked by the press why the people had been unable to fix the rink themselves the knight said ‘they’re very nice people and I like them very much but they’re all idiots!’ And everyone lived happily ever after.”
Enter the Donald. In late May of 1986, the 39-year-old Trump made an offer to Mayor Ed Koch. Trump would step in and take over the construction and operation of the project for no profit and have it up and running in time for the holiday season. Koch tried mightily and quite sneakily tried to reject Trump’s offer. A very public Trump-Koch feud ensued; Donald ultimately prevailed taking on the responsibility to finish the rink in less than six months for no more than $3 million. The city politicos could only hope that when Donald failed it would divert attention from their own incompetence.
Instead of failing, Trump finished the job in just four months at a final cost 25% below the budget. It wasn’t rocket science according to Trump. It was common sense and “management.” But the incident also demonstrated Trump’s mastery and command of public relations and how to attract massive amounts of free press.
Trump learned that the press likes drama and extremes–positive or negative–and was hungry for every morsel about this otherwise insignificant project. Any milestone of the project’s progress resulted in press conferences often with ceremony, pomp and circumstance, and frequently, celebrity-filled. When concrete was laid: press conference. Construction complete: press conference. The first ice: press conference. The Grand Opening included Dick Button, Peggy Fleming and Scott Hamilton to name a few. Everything became an event and free promotion. City officials stopped attending press conference because it was actually becoming an embarrassment. The rink which had been a perpetual money loser started making money immediately which Trump donated to charity.
Trump’s thought process, approach and management style for the Wollman problem are quite accurately laid out in a short and rather entertaining chapter in his The Art of the Deal. But are the skills used in fixing a failed city project transferable to fixing a broken political system?
Maybe more than people think. In his own style, using only earned media, Trump has dominated the nation’s entire political agenda and its airwaves, created a new language of bluntness, upended political correctness (tone be damned), freely criticized mainstream media and brought life to a moribund citizenry even if creating a bit of acrimony and anger along the way.
Trump could be that super-anomaly – making us fundamentally rethink our collective description of political reality. When the dust settles we might end up with a new paradigm on how to best fix our problems. The world is a dangerous place with problems left and right. But we do need to ask ourselves how to best deal with the less dangerous world filled with Wollman Rinks. Maybe if we can start to solve small problems, people will start believing we can solve big ones.
Wollman Rink has been featured in several movies, including Love Story and Serendipity.
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