Starting in 1968, Trump was employed at his father's real estate company, Trump
Management, which owned racially segregated middle-class rental housing in New York
City's outer boroughs.[50][51] In 1971, his father made him president of the company and
he began using the Trump Organization as an umbrella brand.[52] Between 1991 and
2009, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for six of his businesses: the Plaza
Hotel in Manhattan, the casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and the Trump Hotels &
Casino Resorts company.[53]
Manhattan and Chicago developments
Trump attracted public attention in 1978 with the launch of his family's first Manhattan
venture, the renovation of the derelict Commodore Hotel, adjacent to Grand Central
Terminal.[54] The financing was facilitated by a $400 million city property tax abatement
arranged for Trump by his father who also, jointly with Hyatt, guaranteed a $70 million
bank construction loan.[51][55] The hotel reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt Hotel,[56] and
that same year, Trump obtained rights to develop Trump Tower, a mixed-use
skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.[57] The building houses the headquarters of the Trump
Corporation and Trump's PAC and was Trump's primary residence until 2019.[58][59]
In 1988, Trump acquired the Plaza Hotel with a loan from a consortium of sixteen
banks.[60] The hotel filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992, and a reorganization plan
was approved a month later, with the banks taking control of the property.[61] In 1995,
Trump defaulted on over $3 billion of bank loans, and the lenders seized the Plaza
Hotel along with most of his other properties in a "vast and humiliating restructuring"
that allowed Trump to avoid personal bankruptcy.[62][63] The lead bank's attorney said of
the banks' decision that they "all agreed that he'd be better alive than dead." [62]
In 1996, Trump acquired and renovated the mostly vacant 71-story skyscraper at 40
Wall Street, later rebranded as the Trump Building.[64] In the early 1990s, Trump won the
right to develop a 70-acre (28 ha) tract in the Lincoln Square neighborhood near the
Hudson River. Struggling with debt from other ventures in 1994, Trump sold most of his
interest in the project to Asian investors, who financed the project's
completion, Riverside South.[65]
