6-3 40年减税优惠，大笔资金投入，还有Hyatt的纽约独家契约，他到底是怎么做到的

1. The whole arrangement was subject to approval by the city’s Board of Estimate, which met to consider it for the first time in late December 1975。

2. 

 A week before the meeting, I went to Victor Palmieri and explained that if he wanted the city to take our abatement seriously, we had better make it clear that the Commodore was in deep trouble and that it might not survive much longer.

3. On December 12, Palmieri announced that the Penn Central had lost another $1.2 million on the Commodore during 1975, was anticipating worse losses for 1976, and as a result intended to close the hotel permanently no later than June 30, 1976.

4. 

Portman Associates, a company that had spent the past two years trying to get financing for a huge

new hotel across town in Times Square, revealed that it was scrapping the project because it had been unable to get bank support。

5. 

I needed all the evidence I could get that investing in New York made sense.

6. 

On the other hand, in dealing with the city, I could point to the Portman fiasco as clear proof that the only chance I had to get financing was if they gave me my tax abatement.

    7.   

the Board of Estimate decided to switch the structure of the tax-abatement program. Instead of my selling the

hotel to the city and then leasing it back, I would do the whole deal through the state’s Urban Development Corporation.

8.

opposition to it had begun to intensify. The loudest chorus came from other hotel owners.

Albert Formicola, head of the city’s Hotel Association, argued that the tax abatement would give me an unfair advantage competing against the other hotel owners in the city who paid Ml property taxes.

The head of the Hilton, Alphonse Salamone, said he could understand a ten-year tax abatement, but that everyone ought to compete as equals after that.

9. Even Harry Helmsley, who was more successful and less envious than most of my competitors, said he thought the deal was a little excessive.

10. three city councilmen held a news conference in front of the Commodore to denounce the deal.

11   But while other hotel owners were great at carping, not one of them made an alternative offer for the Commodore.

12. Several months earlier, a city official had requested that I send along a copy of my option agreement with the Penn Central. I did—but it was signed only by me, and not the railroad, because I had yet to put down my $250,000.

Admittedly, most everyone assumed I had an exclusive option on the property—and it helped that the city didn’t dispute that. （dispute 对…提出质询;对…表示异议(或怀疑)）

13.

It came from a company that owned a bunch of low-rent hotels in bad neighborhoods. If the city could get title to the Commodore, these people said, they’d be willing to buy it, put up a couple of million dollars toward a renovation, share all profits with the city, and forgo a cap.

14 On May 12, Palmieri announced that the Penn Central was going to close the Commodore permanently in six days—exactly one day before the Board of Estimate had scheduled, for the fourth time, 

15.

On May 19, all the local papers carried front-page stories about the

last tenants moving out of the Commodore, the hundreds of employees who were now looking for work, and the dread that local shopowners were feeling in anticipation of a boarded-up hotel.

16. On May 20, the Board of Estimate voted unanimously（ [juˈnænəməsli]   ）—8 to 0—to give me the full tax-abatement program I’d sought. Over the course of the forty years, that abatement will save me tens of millions of dollars. The battle was more than worth it.

17

But incredibly, getting the tax abatement still didn’t convince the banks we had a viable enterprise.

18.

If i'd left the Commodore the way it was - old and dull and nodescript - it would have had absolutely no impact, and it wouldn't be doing the business it is doing today. 

19.

As it turned out, by the time we opened our doors in September 1980, the city had turned around, and we were able to charge $115 for a single room, with an average occupancy of more than 80 percent 

By July 1987, we'd raised the room rate to $175 , and now we average almost 90 percent occupancy.

20. There was one small clause in the deal that I think maybe even more valuable than my half-ownership of the Grand Hyatt, It's something called an exclusive covenant, and its effect is to permanently prohibit Hyatt from building competing hotels in the five boroughs of New York without my permission. 

21.

There are some people in your life you just want to pay your respects to , no matter what it involves. 

In the end, I think one reason my partnership with Hyatt has remained so strong, beside the fact that the hotel has been so successful, is that I always felt such affection for A.N Pritzker.