IT WOULD be a tragedy for Scotland if Donald Trump’s ambitious plans for a £1 billion golf resort on a protected stretch of the Aberdeenshire coast are rejected, the tycoon’s counsel claimed yesterday.
Mr Trump’s plan, he said, was to develop a major golf resort on a scale never seen before in Britain, centred on an “exceptional world-class” course on the Menie links in Aberdeenshire – a setting of high-quality landscape and environment.
The development, he said, would bring very significant economic benefits not just to the North-east but to Scotland as a whole.
But in order to achieve Mr Trump’s vision of building the “best golf course in the world” it was vital to use the land within the Foveran site of special scientific interest (SSSI). The back nine holes of the main championship course would be laid out within the shifting sand-dunes in the SSSI. Lord Boyd said: “I accept that the development will have significant adverse effects on the qualities for which the area has been designated but I submit that these are clearly outweighed by economic benefits of national importance.”
The applicants, he argued, had not sought to hide or massage the impacts of the development on the environment, and they had sought the advice of leading experts about the potential impact of the scheme.
“A more unscrupulous dev-eloper might have tried to obtain more pliable advice but that has not been the applicants’ approach,” said Lord Boyd.
He said Mr Trump’s vision and the position of the Trump Organisation had been clear from the beginning. “If the applicants are to realise the vision of an exceptional world-class course underpinning £1 billion of investment then the championship course needs to use the SSSI,” he told the inquiry. “To say that is not to refuse to compromise – it is a statement of principle and fact. Mr Trump made his position clear in his precognition when he said that the bottom line was that if he was refused permission to develop on the southern end of the SSSI he would withdraw from the development as it would not and could not fulfil his ambition…”
The inquiry reporters are expected to make their recommendations to Scottish ministers by late August or early September. The Trump development comprises two championship golf courses, a 450-room hotel, 1,000 timeshare apartments, 36 golf villas and 500 homes.
