Trump firm's bid for second golf course in Scotland to get green light
Donald Trump’s family business is expected to win approval to build a second golf course on his Aberdeenshire estate, more than a decade after it was first promised.
Local councillors are expected to rubberstamp the proposal on Tuesday after it was endorsed by Aberdeenshire’s planning officers, days before the council votes on a far more controversial bid by the Trump Organization to build 550 luxury homes nearby.
The new 18-hole course, to be named MacLeod course after Trump’s mother Mary, will sit alongside the first loss-making championship course that opened at Menie north of Aberdeen in 2012.
Local community councillors believe the new course will benefit the area by boosting tourism, and help it recover from a slump caused by the collapse in oil prices, which hit Aberdeen’s North Sea oil and gas industries.
But critics are doubtful about the course’s viability and believe it can only be funded by the construction and sale of the 550 luxury and holiday homes, which councillors will be voting on at a separate meeting on Thursday. The properties are expected to cost about £20m to build, with the largest one expected to sell for more than £1m each.
The existing course and boutique hotel at MacLeod House have consistently lost money since they opened. Local people say the championship course, which closes for five months during the winter and is hit regularly by bad weather during the summer, is routinely empty.
The latest accounts for the Trump International Golf Club Scotland show the business lost more than £1m in 2017 on a turnover of £2.5m, with the downturn cutting its income by 3% that year.
Its survival is dependent on historic loans from President Trump totalling £40m and a top-up loan in 2017 of £1.3m from the DJT Holdings LLC, the parent company which also owns various other Trump Organization companies. But DJT Holdings LLC is under investigation by US prosecutors probing allegations Trump’s firms have profited from his presidency, although the inquiry is not thought to include his Aberdeenshire resort.
The two golf courses were given outline planning permission in 2008 as part of Trump’s plans for a £750m golfing resort featuring an eight-storey fivestar hotel, timeshare flats, conference centre, spa golfing academy, shops and sports facilities. None of those are expected to be built.
That scheme floundered after the banking crisis, leaving critics of the scheme furious. The project involved the removal or remodelling of a large area of rare mobile dunes, which were legally protected as a site of special scientific interest (SSSI).
In June, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH)announced it would strip the dunes of their SSSI designation. Among 15 conditions attached to the second golf course scheme, Aberdeenshire has told the Trump Organization it must have environment and habitat management plans for the site to protect its dunes, badgers and otters, and an outdoor access plan to protect public rights of way.
David Wallace, the chairman of Belhelvie community council, which includes the nearby village of Balmedie,expressed concerns about construction traffic clogging up local roads while the new course and housing were under construction. The resort had originally been due to have a new road and junction, which was not being built.
The council have significant reservations about the housing scheme but supported the new course. “We quite enjoy the fact we have such a prestigious golf course on our doorstep. It does bring people to the area but it is an expensive place to play,” Wallace said.
The application for the second course was first submitted to Aberdeenshire council in September 2015 and appeared to lapse for several years. No new documents were submitted between August 2017 until earlier this year, seven months after the Trump Organization put forward its plans for the 550 houses in July 2018.
David Milne, a fierce critic of Trump who lives near the resort’s clubhouse, said it was clear the housing scheme was needed to fund the resort. “The money has to come from somewhere,” he said. “There are not enough people playing that golf course to make it viable, and there never will be.”