Grand Hyatt New York

Well, I will go back even further to the Soviet Union.

And in 1980, you had Donald Trump building his first and perhaps his most only really successful hotel, the Hyatt Grand Central.

And this is a huge hotel near Grand Central Station.

Like any hotel, it needed hundreds and hundreds of TV sets.

He's never owned a hotel.

He's never run a hotel, but there is the Commodore hotel.

a very ancient historic hotel right across from Grand Central Station, but it's rat infested.

It's terrible.

It's poorly run.

Nobody's actually living there.

In fact, there are homeless people sleeping in the corridors of the Commodore Hotel.

So Trump goes to see the owners of the Commodore Hotel, and he says, I want to buy this hotel.

If any of these themes feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health and support organizations in the episode description.

Stepping into the lobby of the Hotel Commodore is like entering an Italian courtyard.

Light gushes through the glass roof, bouncing off the fronds of palm trees, while water fountains tinkle in the background.

It's serene, a haven from the chaos of New York City.

26 years old, packed up what little I had, which wasn't much, and moved to New York City.

worked in the Hyatt the Grand Hyatt New York right there Grand Central met my wife there she worked there as well we got married there living in Manhattan had a son I'm going past Times Square most days on my way to work and passing the recruiting station and it just ate at me that something I really wanted to be a part of was taken away from me I was denied through no fault of my own And I stopped in one day just on a whim and said, hey, what's a guy got to do? And the young Marine that was there, the recruiter said, how old are you? And at the time I was 32.

And he said, yeah, you're too old.

And he just sent you out.

Byrd writes, Roy would be Trump's legal counsel and fixer on all his Manhattan deals in the 1970s.

The first of these involved Trump's acquiring the development rights to the dilapidated Commodore Hotel at East 42nd Street adjacent to Grand Central Terminal.

Trump got his tax abatement for the property, says Byrd.

The Wall Street Journal called it the tax deal of the century.

Primarily, our purchases have been in New York.

And about five years ago, New York was not considered very hot, and cities in general weren't considered too hot.

And we purchased the old Commodore Hotel, and we've reconverted that now into about $10 million Grand Hyatt Hotel, which is opening up next week in New York City.

And we've made some other purchases that have been fine.

He got the zoning variances.

He got the tax abatements for the first big real estate deal, the Commodore Hotel.

Over the opposition of Mayor Ed Koch, who thought this was an outrageous tax abatement for a wealthy developer, completely unjustified.

But Roy prevailed, appealed, appealed, appealed to the New York through the New York courts.