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Old Posted Nov 7, 2007, 1:56 PM
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http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...BC%20Universal

TRUMP SAYS KOCH REJECTED PROFIT SHARING

May 30, 1987

Donald J. Trump said yesterday that he had offered to share 25 percent of the profits on his proposed Television City development with New York City for 40 years, in return for a 20-year tax abatement on the multimillion-dollar complex.

The Koch administration announced Thursday that it had ruled out special tax and zoning concessions for the entire 100-acre site on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. In their public statements Thursday, however, neither Mr. Trump nor city officials divulged details of their negotiations.

City officials involved in the negotiations said then that they had collapsed because Mr. Trump was demanding too many concessions.

According to Mr. Trump, the city officials with whom he had negotiated a tentative agreement on May 21 were unable to convince the Mayor and his top fiscal advisers to accept the plan. The developer asserted that the city's Budget Director, Paul L. Dickstein, ''started telling Koch, 'Well, I think I can negotiate a better deal.' ''

''I realized it immediately - ah, these jerks - these guys were all second-guessing the economic development people,'' Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Koch said in an interview yesterday that none of his top fiscal advisers had approved the proposed deal, which would have enabled Mr. Trump to subsidize an extremely low rent to NBC, which is considering moving to Mr. Trump's site along the Hudson River, between 59th and 72d Streets.

''Nobody signed off on the deal, not Abe Biderman, Paul Dickstein, Alair or me,'' the Mayor said. Abraham Biderman is the city's Finance Commissioner and Alair A. Townsend is the Deputy Mayor for Finance and Economic Development.

Mr. Koch also said that, after the negotiations on May 21, Mr. Trump tried to pressure him in telephone conversations to agree quickly to the proposal.

''He said, 'You've got to make a decision,' '' Mr. Koch said. ''He said, 'I can taste the deal in my mouth.' His thrust was, 'Today, Today.' That's the way he operates, that he becomes so overbearing that people capitulate.''

The Mayor said he refused to make a quick decision over the Memorial Day weekend. ''I said, 'I am not going to be rushed into making a panicked decision to spend city money,' '' Mr. Koch said.

Last Tuesday, Mr. Trump wrote a blistering letter to the Mayor, accusing him of playing ''Russian roulette with perhaps the most important corporation in New York over the relatively small amounts of money involved, because you and your staff are afraid that Donald Trump may actually make more than a dollar of profit.''


On the same day, before he had received Mr. Trump's letter, Mr. Koch said, he had come to the conclusion that he could not accept the proposal. He said he could not allow the city to accept a portion of Television City's profits, in part because it was uncertain how much money the city would eventually receive.

''I will not take unreasonable risks with the public's tax dollars,'' Mr. Koch wrote Thursday to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Koch also suggested yesterday that to have accepted the proposal would have tied him personally into the public-approval process for the entire Trump development. ''The profit is something that would have committed us to having become his agent'' before the Board of Estimate and other city boards that will eventually rule on Mr. Trump's plan for the site, he said.

Mr. Trump also offered an alternative plan to the city last week, according to a person familiar with the developer's proposals.

The second plan, which was rejected immediately by city officials, called for Mr. Trump to give the city one-sixth of the buildable land at the site, and for the city to negotiate incentives with NBC and to build the network a new home. Under the plan, Mr. Trump would have received only the prestige of having NBC at the site.
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