Interview With Ivanka Trump

Image: Damon Winter / The New York Times / Redux

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Like her father, Donald, Ivanka Trump is a celebrity who stars in the NBC reality series The Apprentice and regularly graces magazine covers. A former fashion model, she's a lot easier on the eyes. Unlike her dad, she embraces diplomacy and shies away from bluster. More than that, she is a serious businesswoman.
   
At 26, the Wharton-trained Trump is a top executive in the family real estate empire, having earned her stripes working for rival real estate mogul Bruce Ratner. These days, in a souring economy, she continues to travel the world checking in with various projects and looking for distressed properties.
   
"There's no access to capital, and if you have the capital available, there are incredible deals to be made," she tells Portfolio.com in an exclusive interview. "We're buying golf courses left and right across the country. I think large commercial assets will soon start to become available. There are just great deals to be made, and these are the times people should be buying. If you have the ability to do so, which is a big 'if.'"

Lloyd Grove: You're the vice president of development and acquisitions of the Trump Organization. Describe to me what all that means and what it is you actually do.

Ivanka Trump: I actually joke with my father that ultimately at our organization, titles mean very little. It's my father and then everybody else. But as vice president of development and acquisitions, I'm involved in every aspect of our new construction projects. A lot of our projects are internationally based at this time, most of them are actually outside of the U.S.—from Dubai to Panama to Scotland. We're really building all over the world right now, so in my capacity as vice president, a lot of what I do is get involved in the acquisition process, from sourcing the potential opportunities and then the initial due-diligence process, but then, of course, I follow the deals through to predevelopment planning, design, interior design, architectural design, sales and marketing, and, ultimately, through operations. One of the things that I've done and been very active with since joining the company four years ago now is get involved with the ramp-up and the development of our hotel-management company, called the Trump Hotel Collection. We've had one flagship property here in New York that we managed on-site with the general manager of the property who reported directly back to us here at the Trump Organization.

L.G.: Is that the Columbus Circle property?
 
I.T.: That's right, but we had a lot of projects in the pipeline, from Chicago—a 92-story tower with the 350 key hotel—that would've been opening within two years from the time I joined, which opened January 31 of this year. We had Las Vegas, which is a 1,300-room hotel condominium, that was also in the pipeline. And the hotel-management company just generally allows us to enter markets that we may not enter as developers, really as an operator and in a branded capacity. So I worked with my brother Don, and we really developed a great company and really devoted a lot of time to the development of that particular part of our organization.

L.G.: Is that something that you and Don basically launched?
 
I.T.: Yeah. Again, we're a family company, so it wasn't in isolation, certainly, but it's something that we've spent a considerable amount of time focusing on, and it's something that we really wanted to build and make spectacular. We started with the flagship property here in New York. Now we have 13 new construction hotels, all fully financed, all under construction, opening within the next three years.

L.G.: How many of these projects are projects where you're taking a percentage because you're licensing the Trump name, versus projects that you're actually involved in from start to finish, from the financing to the construction, to everything?
 
I.T.: Well, Trump International Hotel Tower in Chicago, which I mentioned, is a 92-story building, the tallest residential building in the United States, just surpassing Trump World Tower here in New York, and that's 100 percent our job. We'd won an award with Condé Nast Traveler within two months of being operational for the hottest new hotel in North America. Forbes Traveler gave it the best business hotel. The hotel component of the building opened in January, and the residential component is opening as we speak. We're releasing floors every month. The retail component will be the last phase to open, which will be in the third quarter of next year. [The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the slowing economy has put the Chicago venture under pressure, with $1 billion in loans coming due and many condominiums yet to be sold.] In Las Vegas, we have a partner in Phil Ruffin, but we managed the construction and development of the project, so that is one of our jobs as well, which is a 1,300-room hotel in Las Vegas. And I'm very proud to say one of the things I really believe we do best at the Trump Organization is build in an environment that is arguably one of the most challenging construction environments, and there have been plenty of pros who have gone out to Vegas and failed in that aspect.

L.G.: Why is it one of the most challenging?
 
I.T.: To me, budgets from a contractor perspective, from a building perspective, it's just a very challenging market to build in. And you've seen that with projects, real mega-projects that are going hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, that are being delivered well behind schedule. We actually delivered our building four months ahead of schedule, on budget, and with less than one percent in change orders.

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