Trump Sings Words From an Old Song

Saturday, I drove to the Ambassador to see Donald Trump and hear his plans to put up the world’s tallest building on the site of the old hotel.

The hotel is part of my memory lane. As a young Associated Press reporter based in Sacramento, I stayed there for weeks in 1966, covering Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor. Even then, the Ambassador was beginning to fall apart. But for someone who wasn’t sure how to order from room service, it seemed pretty grand.

One bad June night two years later, I was sent to the Ambassador from the AP office downtown. As my cab sped west on Wilshire, toward the hotel, I saw an ambulance heading east. “Follow that ambulance,” I said to the cab driver. We ended up at the old Central Receiving Hospital in time to see Robert F. Kennedy being carried inside.

The Ambassador wasn’t the place for sentiment or memories last Saturday. In place of the courtly doormen, security people looked suspiciously at visitors. The hard-nose approach was suitable. Sentiment is a handicap in dealing with Donald Trump and in considering the impact that his proposed development would have on the city.

If Mayor Tom Bradley and the City Council are not careful, Trump will bluff them into humble submission, just as Al Davis is doing. Like the Raiders’ Al, Trump knows the way to our leaders’ insecure hearts: A sweet song with lyrics including the words “world class.”

For the Trump affair is really an exercise in business negotiation. Behind the hype about the building is the old story of a developer trying to make money from a plot of land. The question is whether the city will let him have what he wants or obtain a deal that will benefit the taxpayers as well as Trump.

Trump is a Manhattan real estate developer and Atlantic City casino and hotel owner whose flair for hype, self-promotion and huge projects made him one of the 1980s’ most famous entrepreneurs. He basks in his fame. After buying the Eastern Airlines shuttle, changing the name to the Trump Shuttle and seeing its business increase, he said, “The name made that successful instantaneously.”

Trump’s Los Angeles game was clear even before he arrived: Come in with an outrageous proposal, watch the neighbors go crazy and then propose a compromise.

Trump doesn’t look like a tough negotiator. He has a soft, friendly face and wore a conservative blue suit and red tie, part of a wardrobe tasteful enough to have won the Tailors’ Council of America’s award for best-dressed entrepreneur in the country. He’s not Raider Al, who has slicked back hair and wears Raider black and white. When you meet Al, you know he’s trouble. With Trump, there’s no warning.

He promised to build a “world class” combination of apartments, condos, offices, a hotel, retail stores and a ballroom twice as large as the substantial one at the Century Plaza. That will please political candidates, who will be able to invite twice as many donors to their fund-raising dinners.

The outrageous part was the world’s tallest building. Although Bradley and Councilman Nate Holden, who represents the district, shared the press conference table with Trump, neither liked the proposal. Another skeptic in attendance was Council President John Ferraro, whose district adjoins the hotel.

That means the bargaining is beginning. Even though there is no height limit in that area, Bradley and the council, through various statutes, have complete control over the building site. Let’s assume Trump doesn’t really expect to be allowed to put up a building more than 125 stories tall, and will give up the idea. The municipal side should insist on more concessions.

The city should have power over design. Bradley, Ferraro and Holden should demand that the development be livable, the kind of place where you can walk around, shop, browse, meet in small places for drinks, meals or coffee. We need friendly, human scale. World’s biggest doesn’t mean world class.

Second, and just as important, the city should exact a stiff price from Trump and his partners. The school district wants to build a badly needed high school at the Ambassador site, but the 25 acres on Wilshire Boulevard are better suited for commercial development. Trump and his partners should pay a big amount of money toward a high school nearby, and help finance low-cost housing to replace homes torn down for the school.

Symbolic of the ambivalent nature of the Trump deal was the press conference site, the old Ambassador bar where Mrs. Robinson had a drink with Benjamin in the movie “The Graduate” before taking him upstairs for the lesson of his life. Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson’s affair didn’t go well. Maybe the Trump affair will end more happily for Los Angeles.