Decades ago, Columbia refused to pay $ 400 million in Trump

Donald Trump demanded $ 400 million from Columbia University.

When he did not succeed, he stormed a meeting with the university administrators and then publicly castigated the president of the university as a model and a total moron.

This drama dates back 25 years.

Today, these two New York institutions, billionaire president of the United States and Ivy League University, 270, which cultivated 87 Nobel Prize winners, were locked in an extraordinary confrontation involving freedom of expression, academic freedom and the role of federal governments in the financing of higher education.

The first battle between Mr. Trump and Columbia involved the most prize from New York New York. It was a lucrative real estate agreement, according to interviews with 17 real estate investors and former administrators and university initiates, as well as contemporary press articles.

Some former university officials discreetly wonder if the ultimately unsuccessful real estate transaction sowed the seeds of Mr. Trumps the current accent on Columbia. Its administration demanded that the University are strengthening a vast control of its policies and even curriculum decisions in its efforts to suppress anti -Semitism on the campus. He also canceled federal subsidies and contracts in Columbia worth $ 400 million.

Friday, Columbia conceded some of Mr. Trumps's requests concerning his protest policies, his security practices and his department of studies in the Middle East. This decision alarmed certain teachers who feared that the university had agreed to changes in the aim of reconquering $ 400 million. The Trump organization and the White House refused to comment.

In the previous dispute, Lee C. Bollinger, the former president of Columbia who finally chose not to continue the goods belonging to Mr. Trump, rather chose to extend the Columbia campus on adjacent land at university. I wanted Columbia a much more ambitious project for Columbia than the Trump property would not allow it, and which would adapt to the surrounding properties, which would blend with the Morningsoid campus and the Harlem community, he said in an interview.

The confrontation had its roots in the late 1990s, when Columbia faced a common challenge in New York: located in one of the most expensive and congestioned cities in the world, it wanted more space. The federal government was overwhelming the budget of the National Institutes of Health and to compete with other universities for research subsidies, Columbia needed room to host more scientists and laboratories.

The widening of his imprint beyond his Morningsoide Heights campus with a neighboring Harlem would be complicated. In 1968, the university began the construction of a gymnasium in Morningsoide Park. The design, construction delays and limited access to Harlem residents led to cries of segregation and racism, according to an exhibition of libraries at Columbia University. Tensions between University and Harlem community leaders have persisted for decades.

The officials and administrators of Columbia hoped to repair the relationship, but they knew they were also to seek alternatives.

Enter Mr. Trump. Not yet a reality TV star, he was then an impetuous real estate developer, with a love of the press in Tabloid. He offered a house for an expansion of Columbia, a property not developed in the Upper West Side between Lincoln Center and the Hudson river. He was known as Riverside South before renamed him Trump Place.

The property was at the southern cutting edge of a much larger site of 77 acres that Mr. Trump had detained since the early 1970s, a former freight courtyard which was once the largest unspecified package in Manhattan. In the early 1990s, Mr. Trump had made no progress in the development of the site after having amassed more than $ 800 million in debt, most at very high interest rates, and could not afford bank payments on property.

But in 1994, two Hong Kong investors came to his rescue. They agreed to finance his vision of high height residences, Mr. Trump remaining the public face of the project. He would also seek $ 350 million in federal subsidies.

However, Mr. Trump had trouble deciding what to develop on the southern edge. He continued buyers, including CBS. It boasted that the network was close to an agreement for a studio of 1.5 million square feet on the property.

But CBS finally fell, deciding in early 1999 to stay in his studios on West 57th Street.

A few months later, Mr. Trump sang the property whenever he could. My father taught me everything I know, and he would understand what I'm going to say, said Mr. Trump following his father, Fred Trump. Then Trump praised his plans for Trump Place. It's a wonderful project, he said.

In 2000, Mr. Trump had his goal on a new partner: Columbia, whom he had heard to seek space. Development would have been a departure for the university. It was more than two kilometers from the Columbias campus and relatively small, which requires it to be built, with imposing buildings.

However, the idea drew the attention of several administrators and certain best administrators. For more than a year, they discussed what could become grounds, mainly with officials of the Trump organization and sometimes with Mr. Trump himself. Trump even invented a name for potential development: Columbia Prime.

But in negotiations, he has often changed his requests, even if reports appear in Mr. Trumps favored Tabloid, the New York Post, saying that Columbia was about to buy it.

In private, he has launched numerous prices, exceeding $ 400 million, according to a Columbia official of that time, a figure that an anonymous source has disclosed to the position a few times.

Whatever the amount, Trump said to Columbia officials, the university would get a lot of things that it should also rename her business school of Donald J. Trump School of Business.

An administrator postponed Mr. Trumps' request. The university renames the buildings, said the person, noting that his engineering school had recently been appointed for a businessman who had made a donation of $ 26 million. If Mr. Trump wanted to make such a gift, said the person, there were other officials of Columbia who would be impatient to meet. Mr. Trump did not donate.

While the discussions rushed, many people from Columbia were frustrated by their relations with Mr. Trump. However, the two parties organized a meeting in a conference room in Midtown Manhattan with the intention of advancing a transaction.

Some administrators arrived with a report prepared on their behalf by a real estate team from Goldman Sachs, who attended each meeting between Columbia officials and representatives of the Trump organization. He described what the investment bank considered a fair value for the field.

Trump arose late, was informed of the analysis of universities and was exasperated.

Goldman Sachs had attributed a value of around $ 65 million to $ 90 million, according to a person in the room. In an attempt to appease Mr. Trump, a trustee proposed that the university would be ready to pay the top of the range.

It didn't matter. A furious Trump released less than five minutes after the start of the meeting.

The university did not officially abandon a possible expansion on the property of Mr. Trumps before Mr. Bollinger took office as president in 2002. At that time, Columbia had envisaged two options: an expansion on the intrigue of the Upper West Side or a move to the North in West Harlem, where Columbia had started to buy properties.

In his inaugural speech, Mr. Bollinger spoke of universities to develop, qualifying the school a large urban university most constrained for space.

This state of affairs, however, cannot last, he added. To fulfill our responsibilities and aspirations, Columbia must develop considerably during the next decade. Whether we develop the property that we already have on Morningsoide Heights, Manhattanville or Washington Heights, or that we were pursuing a design of several campuses in the city or beyond, is one of the most important questions that we face in the years to come.

He assessed the Trump option for a satellite campus and also started to have conversations on repairing the crack with the heads of the Harlems community and the expansion to the north, creating a contiguous imprint.

He quickly determined that Harlem, not Donald Trump, was Columbias Future. It is an opportunity in Manhattanville to create something immense vitality and beauty, said Mr. Bollinger at Times in 2003. It is not just entering and throwing buildings.

The property of Mr. Trumps West Side was finally developed after the billionaires of Hong Kong who had a majority participation in IT sold the whole site for $ 1.76 billion.

However, Mr. Trump was indignant. He accused investors of selling it much less than he might have. He continued them for $ 1 billion in damages. The case was rejected, the judge stressing that the development had sold $ 188 million more than his last evaluation.

If he was disappointed with the success of Riverside South, Mr. Trump had another asset that appreciated: his own fame.

The apprentice made her television debut in January 2004 and became an instant success.

But Mr. Trumps Mega-Stardom did not make him forget the missed agreement with Columbia.

In 2010, about eight years after Mr. Bollinger contacted Mr. Trump to tell him that the school was relaxing at Harlem Two Columbia studying journalists who had written a profile of the president of the postal university, a gold letter on the thick paper of a disgruntled reader, Donald J. Trump.

He included a copy of a missive which he had recently sent to the board of directors of Columbias, in which he called the Manhattanville campus, Lousy and Mr. Bollinger, a model.

Columbia Prime was an excellent idea thought by a great man, who finally failed due to bad leadership in Columbia, Trump wrote.

He signed it with a black and scribbled marker, Bollinger is terrible!

Trump also shared his indignation in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Years after the end of the agreement, said the newspaper, Trump is still furious. They could have had a beautiful campus, just behind Lincoln Center, Trump told the journalist and qualified Mr. Bollinger a total Cretin.

Trump was perhaps faithful to the principles described in the way of becoming rich, a book of advice which he co-written a few years after his agreement with Columbia became sour.

A chapter is sometimes titled, you must have a grudge.

Maggie Haberman contributed the reports. Susan C. Beachy, Kitty Bennett, Alain Delaquir and Sheelagh McNeill contributed to research.

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