Trump Taj bankruptcy left many contractors angry

In this April 5, 1990 file photo, Donald Trump stands next to a genie’s lamp as the lights of his Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort light up during ceremonies to mark its opening in Atlantic City, N.J.

The contractor who provided the onion domes for the Taj Mahal casino had to eat USD2 million in losses. The contractor who supplied the Carrara marble from Italy ended up filing for personal bankruptcy. The contractor who put in the bathroom partitions had to lay off his brother.
A quarter of a century has passed since Donald Trump refused to pay in full 253 contractors who help build his Taj in Atlantic City. But for many of them, it could have happened yesterday.
“We got next to nothing,” says Michael MacLeod, whose 40-person studio made the giant elephant statues at the casino’s entrance. “I took a big hit.”
After the Taj opened in April 1990, the self-anointed “King of Debt” owed $70 million to contractors employing thousands who built the domes and minarets, put up the glass and drywall, laid the pipes and installed everything from chandeliers to bathroom fixtures. A year later, when the casino collapsed into bankruptcy, those owed the most got only 33 cents in cash for each dollar owed, with promises of another 50 cents later. It took years to get the rest, assuming the companies survived long enough to collect.
Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks and Trump attorney Alan Garten did not respond to a list of questions about the candidate’s Taj dealings.
Marty Rosenberg, former vice president of Atlantic Plate Glass, says the way Trump handled the contractors shows the candidate is shrewd and clever, but Trump won’t get his vote.
“If ethics or morality has nothing to do with business,” Rosenberg says, “he’s a very good businessman.”
For the contractors, the first signs of trouble came in February 1990. Regular checks for work completed stopped arriving in the mail.
One of the hardest hit was marble supplier John Millar, who was owed $3.9 million.
As he was walking into a meeting with contractors to share strategies, landscaper Herman Caucci asked him what he planned to do: Stick it out, or take cash at a discount?
“I don’t know, Herman, I need the money,” Caucci recalls Millar responding before the March 1990 meeting. “We could lose everything.”
Court documents suggest he got about 30 cents on the dollar over the next year. Millar is deceased. His family wouldn’t comment.
Trump managed to open the Boardwalk casino on April 2, 1990, and continued to dismiss rumors that he was in financial trouble, but the truth soon came out.
Over his protests, regulators unsealed a devastating report in August written by Trump’s own accountants that showed he had been burning through cash in his personal accounts so fast in the spring that he would have had nothing by end of the year if he didn’t take drastic action. The next year, the Trump Taj filed for bankruptcy. MDT/AP