The history of the Coking widow.
In the late 1970s, Penthouse tycoon Bob Guccione, eager to get in on the Atlantic City casino action, offered Coking $1 million for her lot. She refused. Exasperated, Guccione tried to build his facility around the house, but his project went broke before he could finish, leaving a steel frame looming over Coking’s place for more than a decade.
So, there was a massive steel framework virtually encasing the house. She had run the house as a boarding home, but did not take any borders from the time the first casino was built in 1978.
Trump comes along in the early 90’s and acquires the unfinished Guccione project, and the CRDA (the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority) offered her low market value - condition considered, and she refused. She wanted one million (even though she had refused that same amount when offered to her in 1980), (then later on down the road when Trump came up to her asking she refused her own price).
She blamed Trump personally for some damage done to her roof by the construction company that had the job of disassembling that steel structure that Guccione had built OVER her house.
The construction company took ownership of the damage, and offered to pay her $90,000 to have repairs. She refused. She wanted more and she wanted to sue Trump in the bargain. The judge wouldn’t go for that. Eventually she took the $90,000 because she was so far in arrears on her property taxes that she was in immediate danger of having the house foreclosed for unpaid taxes.
Superior Court Judge Richard Williams said the attempt by the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority to take the property for a new parking lot and a public park at Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino was flawed because it did not guarantee that the company would not later use the land simply to expand the business. Yet, Trump never did do anything with that land he had the structure removed from except build a parking lot AND a landscaped public green-space.
And this:
“They had an opportunity that was squandered,” Zeitz said. “That’s really what happened. Imagine what they’d done if they’d really reinvested in the city. It’s a shame.”
BY THE NUMBERS
$20,000~
Is what Vera Coking and her husband paid for the 29-room boardinghouse/low income rooming house. In 1961.
$1 million offered by Bob Guccione in 1979/1980.
$1 million offered by Trump after Superior court denied ED.
$530,000~Price fetched at auction.
$995,000~Asking price prior to forced auction.
$2M~Amount Donald Trump offered as recently as several
years ago.
AND - it was reported in the newspapers that Trump not only eventually offered her 2+ million, but in addition to also provide her a free place to live in Palm Beach FL for the remainder of her life.