http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2004426?UserKey=Documenting Trump’s golf dream among the dunes
But BBC film team also highlights families caught up in nightmare of compulsory purchase threat
By Ryan Crighton
Published: 11/11/2010US BILLIONAIRE Donald Trump was so confident he would get permission for his £750million golf resort in Aberdeenshire that he told his architects their plans would be approved – before they were even drawn up.
In a documentary to be screened across Scotland next week, he talks about his passion for his mother’s Scottish homeland – and for his proposals at the Menie Estate, near Aberdeen.
The film follows Mr Trump, his development team and his family as they fought to win planning permission for “the world’s greatest golf course”.
Viewers will see the businessman tell his design team in April 2006 to be ambitious and to do things they would normally not put forward – because the plans were going to be “approved”.
“We have an opportunity to do things I think nobody else would be able to get,” he said.
“And certain things you may say, ‘don’t do them’ – just do them. That’s what I want you to do because we are going to get it approved. OK.”
The plans were rejected 18 months later by Aberdeenshire Council’s infrastructure committee – led then by councillor Martin Ford – before being called in and approved by the Scottish Government.
Mr Ford tells how he felt “lynched” by the media following his decision to reject the plans after the committee’s split vote.
The documentary also shows impassioned pleas from threatened local residents who fear that compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) would be used to clear them from their homes.
Among them are David and Moira Milne, of Hermit Point, who own one of four homes which Mr Trump has been allowed to add to his plans, even though they have vowed never to sell to the developer.
“It’s not just a house – it’s a home,” a tearful Mrs Milne says. “It’s like our baby because it has grown with us. We have extended it and we have done it ourselves.
“And to think somebody can come along with a lot of money . . . and it’s gone. Our heart is in there – we don’t have children and it’s our life.”
Michael and Molly Forbes speak of their attachment to their home, at Mill of Menie, which has been in the family for generations.
Mr Trump’s late mother, Mary MacLeod, emigrated from the Western Isles to New York, marrying Fred Trump in 1936. Donald Trump says the creation of his golf resort is a tribute to her.
His sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, joined him on a flight to Lewis in 2008 when they visited their Hebridean relatives. She says: “As we landed I took his hand and said ‘welcome home’. I was very moved by it. He was so quiet – I knew that he was as moved as I was.”
The TV programme, Donald Trump’s Golf War, produced by Aberdeen-based Midas Media, will be broadcast on
BBC2 at 9pm on Monday.