Trump staff put on hold - Business

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Jul. 25, 2008
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Trump staff put on hold

Tower adjusts employee schedules as closings slow

By HOWARD STUTZ
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Don't call them layoffs.

According to developer Donald Trump, roughly 70 employees at the Trump International Hotel & Tower were "impacted by changes in their schedules" due to the slowdown in closing sales of the building's 1,282 studio, one-bedroom and penthouse units.

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"As more sales close, we'll bring them back on," Trump said Thursday. Jim Petrus, COO of the Trump Hotel Collection, said the job changes affected about one-fifth of the tower's 400-plus-person work force.

"This is not really any different than what has gone on in Las Vegas," Trump said. "We're adjusting schedules because of the volume of business. As soon as the units open up, we'll bring people back on."

In February, MGM Mirage laid off some 150 workers at Circus Circus and in April, the company laid off 400 management employees. Station Casinos said it laid off 70 corporate-level employees in May while staff cutbacks were reported at several of the company's casinos.

The $1.2 billion Trump International, which opened in April, is a 64-story nongaming condominium tower near the site of the razed New Frontier. Owners can place their individually owned units into a hotel reservations system, which is attracting some of the Strip's highest per night rates.

Before the building was topped off a year ago, Trump had said all the units had been reserved by potential buyers who plunked down 20 percent nonrefundable deposits for residences that carried prices of between $700,000 and $5 million.

The current mortgage crisis, he said, has slowed the closing process. In June, Trump said sales had been completed on 250 units. However, a report by Deutsche Bank a week later pegged the closings at almost 200 units as of June 12.

On Thursday, Trump and Petrus said 400 individual units had either closed or were in the process of closing.

"We're working with people. We're doing everything we can to help them," Trump said. "Look, I could have just taken the 20 percent deposits and moved on. But I wasn't going to do that. We're working very hard to help everybody who bought a unit to close their sale."

Trump blamed the problems that befell Countrywide Financial for the slowdown in closings. Countrywide went into financial trouble in the crashing mortgage lending climate and was bought by Bank of America for $2.5 billion. Countrywide had been expected to handle many of the Trump International mortgages.

"Countrywide really let us down," Trump said. "Things were a lot different two years ago."

Plans for a second Trump tower have been placed on indefinite hold until the real estate and construction market recovers, Trump said.

"Listen, I still love this building," Trump said.

Contact reporter Howard Stutz at hstutz@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3871.

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Please enter your name Name: Please enter your email Email: Please enter a comment COMMENTS : (word count limit is 300) You have reached the maximum number of words allowed Current Word Count: Note: Comments made by reporters and editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal are presented with a yellow background. Hoover wrote on July 29, 2008 01:10 PM: "Once I built a tower to the sky, boy did we have fun, one I built a railroad to race time,now its done, brother can you spare a dime?!" Remember this song, learn the lyrics, you gonna need it brothers and sisters, you are going to need it! ..temujin ... khan of the yakka mongols ... wrote on July 27, 2008 10:44 PM: .....This is huge.!!! Jimbo wrote on July 26, 2008 08:21 AM: The place is boring. A hotel with no casino in Las Vegas on the Strip. You could stay at Wynn across the street instead. aaron wrote on July 25, 2008 11:07 AM: Trump is a piece of poop. PenguinWisdom wrote on July 25, 2008 10:11 AM: "Impacted by changes in their schedules" = laid off. I was one of almost 80 people who got laid off from Trump at the beginning of this week. We received severance pay and signed an agreement severing our ties to the property ... I am not bitter - I know market conditions change. However, this is not just a re-arranging of schedules as Trump tries to optimistically describe it. It was the elimination of about 25% of the staff (including entire departments) at what is currently an extremely troubled property. 0u812 wrote on July 25, 2008 06:54 AM: No problem here at this one either, Trump will just Bankrupt this property like he does all of them and make millions. CAS127 wrote on July 25, 2008 06:33 AM: "The fools that bought in to the plan have more money than brains." Well, as we are now seeing, time seems to even out these imbalances...(heh, heh, heh...) Except, of course, if our Zimbabwean prostitute of a government intervenes to steal money from the prudently wise to give it to the stupidly corrupt (in exchange for campaign kickbacks and purchased political support). Vegas wrote on July 25, 2008 06:03 AM: This was a bad deal for an individual right from the start. Trump told everyone it was sold out. All BlSt. That's why he had the big announcement of the 2nd tower. The fools that bought in to the plan have more money than brains. So sad! Maybe he, too, can get a government loan bailout. You can't fix stupid. Diceboy wrote on July 25, 2008 03:56 AM: Trump should have put a casino in his "golden popsicle" to help attract some tourists. The reason he does not have a casino in Trump Tower is because his hotel-casinos in Atlantic City are not profitable and he knows he can't compete with Wynn Las Vegas, Venetian, Bellagio, Mandalay Bay, Palms, etc. The only reason this "carnival barker" was able to build one of the few stand alone condominiums in Las Vegas was because of his name. I can't wait until the national media picks up on this story and makes fun and ridicules this obnoxios fool.