In the last post I discussed how Donald Trump has plans for a 1 and a half billion dollar resort in Aberdeenshire Scotland to be built on a 1,400 acre beachside site that would include two championship golf resorts, a five star hotel, 950 luxury timeshare properties and 450 houses.
Conservationists are outraged over the possible destruction of the fragile dune system, and Trump will have to agree to a series of environmental checks and controls by the Scottish Natural Heritage.
The so-called “back nine” holes of the main 18-hole course will be built over about a tenth of the dunes despite protests from Trump’s own ecologists and SNH that this was unnecessarily destructive.
Trump had refused to move that section of the course, again overruling his own environmental experts, telling the planning inquiry in June that he didn’t do “half-assed”. It was, he told the inspectors, all or nothing.
It was the “magnificence of the dunes, the valleys of the dunes, the access to the ocean, the views of the ocean, the elevations” that made it “potentially, the greatest course in the world”, he told the inquiry.
He will also be required to build a 225-pupil primary school, shops, 98 low-cost houses and 50 starter homes – on land provided free by the council – in return for the private 500-home estate, chalets and the timeshares, which will fund the entire development.
The planning inspectors ruled that the damage to the dunes was outweighed by the resort’s substantial value to the economy – a judgment challenged by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
“It appears that the desires of one high profile overseas developer, who refused to compromise one inch, have been allowed to override the legal protection of this important site,” said Aedan Smith, head of planning for RSPB Scotland.
