Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump’s Palm Beach visits may cool this summer
As balmy spring turns into scorching summer, Palm Beach’s migration of Bentleys and RollsRoyces toward the Hamptons and other northern climates has already begun.
Now many of those who remain are wondering whether the Snowbird in Chief will follow — forgoing frequent visits to his Palm Beach estate until temperatures cool and the town’s social season resumes in the fall.
President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, which has become his Weekend White House, typically closes when Palm Beach’s population thins
over the summer.
The town of Palm Beach is anticipating fewer presidential visits during the next few months — but that doesn’t mean Air Force One will stay away all summer.
“I’m not expecting any visits [but] only President Trump would know that,” said Kirk Blouin, the town’s director of public safety.
Most of Palm Beach’s seasonal residents leave town by the end of April. The Palm Beach Civic Association holds its annual meeting and end-of-season celebration today at the Flagler Museum.
It features a speech by the mayor, awards and a mimosa-infused party that is considered the send-off to a season of parties.
“We have already noticed a big change in traffic,” association spokesman Mike Brown said. “It’s much more dramatic here than in other parts of the county . ... This place, you could almost turn off the traffic lights.”
The Secret Service directed questions about the president’s summer travel plans to the White House, which didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Trump Organization, which controls Trump properties, also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Trump spent last summer campaigning, including at events in Doral and Sunrise while crisscrossing Florida.
This summer, Trump has northern alternatives to Mar-a-Lago for White House getaways, including his Manhattan penthouse and his Bedford, N.Y., estate.
And outside of Florida, there are 14 other Trump golf courses spread around the world, including two in New Jersey and three in New York — not far from the northeastern destinations where many Palm Beachers spend their summers.
Since taking office, Trump has made seven trips to Palm Beach for weekend stays that included hosting world leaders, meeting with federal officials, playing golf, attracting droves of demonstrators and even authorizing a missile attack.
The presidential visits, and security restrictions that come with them, have snarled local traffic from Palm Beach to Interstate 95, kept boats and beach-goers away from areas near Trump’s waterfront estate and hurt nearby aviation businesses — blocked from flying through presidential airspace.
“We are totally grounded,” Marian Smith, owner of Palm Beach Flight Training at Lantana Airport said about presidential visits. “We are [usually] very busy during the season on weekends. Not this year.”
Businesses closer to Mara-Lago have suffered from temporary, Secret Service road closures that they say can keep customers away from Palm Beach boutiques and restaurants normally bustling on the weekends.
Traffic tie-ups during a Trump visit just before Valentine’s Day and over the Easter holiday hurt candy sales at Peterbrooke Chocolatier in Palm Beach, according to store manager Julia Artemyeva.
“It was insane to get on and off the island,” Artemyeva said about security checkpoints and detours. “People don’t even want to bother to come here.”
Traffic was particularly bad during Trump’s February visits, during the peak of season, which made Palm Beach drivers “pretty ornery,” said Patrick Poupart, owner of the Top Cycle bike shop.
“People were honking their horns and yelling. Very uncharacteristic of Palm Beach,” he said.
An increased police presence to help direct traffic, as well as more Palm Beachers heading north as the season winds down, have lessened the town’s traffic crunch, according to Poupart.
Even with the initial presidential traffic woes, Poupart said business hasn’t suffered at his bike shop.
Poupart said he sold a bike to the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump (shopping with a Secret Service escort). He also expects the bike rental portion of his business to pick up now that more tourists are stopping by to ask how to get to Mar-a-Lago.
Despite the disruptions presidential security can bring, Palm Beach County business leaders are expecting a long-term economic benefit. They are counting on a tourism boost from the media exposure that comes during presidential visits.
“Certainly it’s putting the Palm Beaches on the world stage,” said Glenn Jergensen, executive director of the county’s Tourist Development Council.
Crowds and media attention aren’t always welcome in the Town of Palm Beach, where some of the country’s wealthiest residents — living in luxury behind hedges and gates — prize privacy.
Trump’s post-inauguration visits started at the peak of Palm Beach’s social season, which lasts from about Thanksgiving to just after Easter.
Palm Beach’s season features months of glitzy parties at Mar-a-Lago and other resorts that play host to balls and galas raising money for everything from saving the Everglades to fighting cancer.
Trump during his first post-election trip to Palm Beach attended a black-tie fundraiser for the Red Cross held at Mar-a-Lago.
Throughout his trips, Trump has rubbed shoulders with club members at Mar-a-Lago, where membership fees have doubled to $200,000.
Trump also has hosted gatherings and attended dinners at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, a short drive from Mar-a-Lago in West Palm Beach.
During one of Trump’s early visits, the addition of metal detectors were the tip-off to diners at Trump International that they were getting a presidential visit.
“Then I realized who was coming to dinner,” said Sid Dinerstein, former Palm Beach County Republican Party chairman. “We are so blessed that the president of the United States wants to spend so much time here.”
The prestige of hosting the president has come with a cost to local taxpayers. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office estimates that it has cost about $3.7 million for South Florida law enforcement agencies to help provide security for Trump’s visits since his election. County leaders are trying to get the federal government to reimburse those costs.
The Town of Palm Beach’s traffic warnings and collaborations with Secret Service and the Sheriff ’s Office are part of efforts to maintain the “privacy, safety and security” of the president and island residents alike, Palm Beach Mayor Gail Coniglio said.
The difficulty of planning far ahead for presidential visits is that the town doesn’t usually know for sure that Trump is coming until close to his actual arrival.
“What the president of the United States does [is] entirely in his purview,” Coniglio said.