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Mosque Investor Spurns Trump, Trump Trashes Investor
By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 10, 2010
Modified Sep 10, 2010
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By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 10, 2010
Modified Sep 10, 2010
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Donald Trump's offer to buy the proposed site of the fearsome mosque near Ground Zero was quickly swatted away yesterday by one of the property's main investors. A lawyer for Hisham Elzanaty—who said earlier this week that "if someone wants to give me 18 or 20 million dollars today, it's all theirs"—told the AP that Trump's offer, for what Park 51 paid plus 25%, was "just a cheap attempt to get publicity and get in the limelight. He knows what the value of the building is. If he were really interested in buying the buiding, he would have come forward with at least $20 million."
However, as if to underscore the project's organizers' lack of cohesion, a spokesperson for Park 51 was quick to point out that Elzanaty lacks the authority to accept Trump's $6 million offer anyway. "Soho Properties controls the real estate which encompasses the Park51 project in lower Manhattan," spokesman Larry Kopp tells the Daily News. "Hisham Elzanaty is one of eight investors in the project."
And the Donald thinks they're all a bunch of amateurs. In an interview on CNBC this morning, Trump dismissed Elzanaty as "a low level real estate guy without money, and he's looking to flip it... The market's flat and he bought a property less than a year ago and he think it's gone up four-to-five times as much as it was... I said the guys who sold it to you must have been stupid or something worse."
Tagged
charade
donald trump
ground zero mosque
mosque
park 51
real estate
world trade center
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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