23. Trump’s ‘Lost City’
Here’s Donald Trump next to a model of “Television City,” a proposed vast commercial and residential complex in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood along the Hudson River. Trump hoped the project would headquarter NBC News and other television studios. The tall building model in Trump’s hand was a proposed 150-story tower as the area’s centerpiece. It would have been the tallest building in the world if approved. However, things didn’t go as planned.
First and foremost came criticism of the development of the area, with numerous architecture critics saying the entire idea was “woefully simplistic” and had “little connection to the varied pattern of streets” of New York. Additionally, people in the community disapproved of the plan after Trump nearly doubled the area of the original idea when it was first presented. It further spiraled out of control when Mayor Ed Koch agreed to provide tax breaks to NBC if it moved its studios there, but not to Trump himself. In characteristic Trump fashion, this boiled over into tabloid fodder name-calling.
