Donald Trump gets go-ahead for new Scottish golf course
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Plans for a second golf course at Donald Trump’s Aberdeenshire resort have been approved
US President Donald Trump’s Menie resort in Aberdeenshire has been given the go-ahead to build a second 18-hole golf course after the Formartine area committee voted to approve the plans by eight votes to four.
The new course is to be named after his Scottish mother Mary Anne MacLeod, who was born on the Isle of Lewis before emigrating to New York City.
The MacLeod course will be built to the south and west of the existing course – Trump International – which opened in 2012.
A total of 18 objections were lodged against the new golf course, with most of the opposition arguing on the facility’s environmental impact and public access, and Aberdeenshire Council.
New Plans for major development
On Thursday, the full Aberdeenshire Council will discuss a separate application for a major housing development at the Menie Estate, named ‘The Trump Estate’.
The £150 million development plans would include 550 homes made up of two, three, four and five-bedroom cottages, priced from £295,000, to larger properties costing more than £1m.
The original plans for the Menie Resort were called in by the Scottish government after being rejected by an Aberdeenshire Council committee more than a decade ago.
Donald Trump had originally promised to spend £1bn developing the golf course, which included two courses, a hotel, hundreds of homes and holiday cottages. A decade later, there was one course, a clubhouse and a small hotel at the original estate house.
But in July 2018, the Trump Organisation brought forward this next application for development, which was described as a ‘weak substitute’ in a council memo in November, stating that it was weighted towards housing rather than tourism. In a responding statement, Trump Aberdeen had branded the remarks in the memo “naive at best.”
