May 18, 2013 – Donald Trump answered questions for about five hours over two days in a civil trial in downtown Chicago this week. Getting him to talk was not an issue. In fact, we learned at least six noteworthy things about him and his 92-story Trump International Hotel & Tower.

1. In a very early design, the tower was 100 percent office space.
2. Originally, the Chicago Sun-Times, owner of the site on which it was built, owned 50 percent of the Trump project. When the newspaper company ran into financial problems in the 2000s, Donald Trump bought out its share.
3. When a large amount of commercial space was taken out of the design before construction started, the residential floors changes, too – including the view from some units. Owners who had already purchased a unit were given the opportunity to back out of their agreements.
4. When you buy a hotel/condo unit at Trump, you can live in it, rent it out, or let the hotel use it as a room. The hotel/condo concept originated in Florida. Originally at Trump, a computerized system assigned units equitably but over time the hotel manager was given discretion as to how rooms are assigned.
5. The condo owner at Trump Chicago who owns the most units is Donald Trump.
6. According to Donald, he personally signs all of The Trump Organization’s checks – thousands of them every week. However, he denied a claim by a former vice president that he inspects and approves every use of his photo in Trump marketing materials.

Photo: Donald Trump from the “Welcome” page of trumpchicago.com.