The Trump Files: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal

Donald Trump was a relatively small player in the New York real estate world in 1975, but the Commodore Hotel promised to put him in the big leagues. The area around the famous old hotel next to Grand Central Station was decrepit, but Trump saw a rare (and cheap) opportunity to remake the famous property and bring new business to Manhattan's then-seedy Midtown.

The mayor at the time was Abe Beame, a Brooklyn politician who was close to Trump's father, Fred. In talking to one of the men responsible for selling the Commodore, Beame described his relationship to the Trumps in simple terms. "Whatever my friends Fred and Donald want in this town, they get," the mayor said, according to journalist Michael D'Antonio's recent Trump biography, Never Enough. What Trump wanted was an option to develop the site of the hotel and an unprecedented 40-year tax abatement from the city. He got them—but not without an act of deception....
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/07/trump-files-how-donald-tricked-new-york-huge-deal