'World's Best Golf Course' Approved - Complete With 23-acre Eyesore

Donald Trump wins permission to build development on ecologically sensitive stretch of Scottish dunesThe billionaire property developer Donald Trump has won permission to build "the world's greatest golf course", complete with high-rise timeshare flats and eight-story hotel, on a rare and ecologically sensitive stretch of dunes overlooking the North Sea.

The New York-based businessman said he was "greatly honored" after Scottish ministers in Edinburgh confirmed that his dream of creating one of golf's most northerly resorts had been approved, despite vociferous opposition from environmentalists and many local residents.

His most famous opponent, Michael Forbes, the fisherman and quarry worker who earned abuse from Trump last year after refusing repeatedly to sell his home, which is on the land, still intends to stay put. "They reckon the construction will last 10 years, but I'll never ever sell to that loudmouth bully," Forbes said last night.

The £1bn coastal resort north of Aberdeen, which covers 2,000 acres (809 hectares), is to have two 18-hole championship courses, four blocks of 950 timeshare flats, 500 "exclusive" homes, 36 villas, a golf academy, and housing for 400 staff. There will also be a coast road, named Trump Boulevard.

Yesterday's outline planning approval legally binds Trump to agree to environmental checks and controls giving Aberdeenshire council and the Scottish government's environment agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, oversight to ensure the remaining wildlife is protected.

Trump will be also 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 500-home estate, chalets and timeshares that will fund the development.

The decision was welcomed by the local constituency MSP, the first minister and leader of the Scottish National party, Alex Salmond, and numerous business and tourism groups which regard it as a boost to the regional economy.

Salmond, whose party faces a crucial by election on Thursday in Glenrothes, Fife, said he had not influenced the decision. "In tough economic times, substantial investment of this kind is at a premium - 6,000 jobs, including 1,400 which will be local and permanent, is a powerful argument. It is entirely right and proper that the resources of the country are harnessed to boost one of our great industries, and tourism is a great Scottish industry."

Trump said: "It will be a tremendous asset and source of pride for both Aberdeenshire and Scotland for many generations ... because of the quality of the land we are given to work with, we will build the greatest golf course in the world."

Conservationists were furious when ministers agreed to override legal protection for part of the Foveran links, a legally protected system of naturally shifting sand dunes. It is designated a site of special scientific interest under EU legislation - but it is also central to Trump's vision. The plan is for the "back nine" holes of the main 18-hole course to be built over about a 10th of the dunes, despite the protests from Trump's own ecologists and Scottish Natural Heritage that this is unnecessarily destructive. Trump has refused to move that section of the course, and overruled his own environmental experts, telling the planning inquiry in June that he didn't do "half-assed" - it had to be all or nothing, he told the inspectors. The inspectors ruled that the damage to the dunes was outweighed by the resort's substantial value to the economy.

This judgment was 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, RSPB Scotland's head of planning.

Martin Ford, the Liberal Democrat councilor whose casting vote against the development forced Scottish ministers to call in the plans, said: "This is a very, very, bad precedent indeed and sends out a bad message about the protection in Scotland of our natural heritage sites. It appears to me to be a vanity project. I don't think we can claim this is a nationally important development, and it certainly did not need to be built on this site."

Critics of Trump's proposals, which also breach Aberdeenshire's local development plan with house construction on the green belt, believe ministers have been overawed by the tycoon's reputation.

Trump, owner of the Miss World beauty pageants, has been told he can only begin building the high-rise timeshare blocks - dubbed "the Benidorms" by angry residents - in stages, after some of the affordable homes are finished. He must also ensure, under Scotland's strict right to roam laws - rules he was unaware of until questioned by the Ramblers Association at the planning inquiry - that visitors still have unimpeded access to the dunes.

'I'll never, ever sell to him'

It is the ramshackle eyesore standing in the way of Donald Trump's great dream: a 23-acre spread of rambling farm buildings and rusting tractors sitting beside the future site of the world's greatest golf course. But despite offers as high as £450,000 from Trump for their home at Mill of Menie, and now the threat of living in a £1bn construction site, Michael Forbes and his wife Sheila are refusing to sell.

"They reckon the construction will last 10 years, but I'll never, ever sell to that loudmouth bully," Forbes said last night.

"As I said before, I would rather give my land away to traveling people than sell to Trump, if it comes to that."

Yesterday's decision by Scottish ministers to approve Trump's resort made him feel "sick", he added. Once a Scottish National party voter, he would never be one again. "I used to be proud to be a Scotsman, but I'm going to take both of my kilts out and burn them after this," he said.

Forbes, a salmon fisherman and quarryman, shot to global fame last October - echoing the film Local Hero, in which an elderly beachcomber blocks Burt Lancaster's planned refinery - after Trump branded his land "disgusting".

Trump claimed Forbes's land was in "total disrepair ... Rusty tractors, rusty oil cans - I actually asked him, 'Are you doing this on purpose to try and make it look bad, so I have to pay some more money?'"

Forbes said Trump would just have to build around him now. "His biggest mistake was having a rant about me and calling me names on the TV," he said.
© Guardian News & Media 2008
Published: 11/3/2008