Our braying fart of president, Donald Trump, trumpeted his skills at rebuilding infrastructure yesterday at an event announcing some bullshit plan. And he used as an example his company's work on the Wollman Rink in Central Park thirty years ago. It's an ice-skating rink, not, you know, a bridge, but he's a proud motherfucker about that play area: "When I did the Wollman Rink, it was 7 years, they couldn’t get it built. It would have been forever. They couldn’t get it built. And I did it in a few months at a much smaller price. They had invested $12 million in building an ice skating rink in the middle of Central Park. Somebody told me about this the other day; they’ve never forgotten it. It was a big deal at the time. It remains a big deal...And I got involved. And I did it in a few months, and we did it for a tiny fraction — tiny fraction of the cost." And because he's gotta be dickish and wrong, he added, "And it’s really no different with a roadway. It’s no different with a bridge or tunnel, or any of the things that we’ll be fixing."
Yeah, Wollman Rink is nice. Yeah, it was a clusterfuck of failure until the end there. But it's a little more complicated, of course, and, of course, Trump exaggerated shit.
For six years (not seven), New York City tried and failed to install steel pipes with freon in the base of the rink to keep it icy. That, combined with, yes, some fucked up rules regarding contracts, was the mistake. By the time they decided to scrap that and move to brine in plastic pipes, they had burned through $12 million. But then once the city finally bailed on freon in 1986, it said that the cost would be $2-3 million to finish the job. Trump came in and said, "Gimme the $3 mill and I'll do it." So the "fraction" of the cost was not something Trump decided on. He was merely the developer. He did get it done quickly and under the $3 million budget, but he didn't spend a nickel.
And, again, it was no miracle it came in under $3 million. That was dead in the middle of the projections of what it would cost.
And, let's be clear, the entire project was paid for by New York City. It wasn't "public/private" funding, as Trump wants his infrastructure spending to be. It was public funding.
And Mr. America First hired a Canadian company to come in and build the rink.
And while the rink was being built, Trump held regular news conferences to brag about how great he was to rebuild the rink, including one where three guys just swept behind him in order to show work being done. He held a press conference to announce the ice was down and, five days later, the ice was ready. He bragged that the railed was the "same railing Onassis had on his boat." It was a fucking embarrassing circus.
And when Trump lost a bid in 1995 to continue running the rink, which turned a profit pretty quickly, he was, of course, a dick about it, saying, "The last thing I need is to be running a skating rink."
To be fair, when the rink opened, Trump was asked if he was going to skate, and he did say something pretty funny and prescient: "No thanks. There are too many people who would like to see me fall on my rear end."
