According to a recent report by The New York Times, Trump National GC Charlotte in Mooresville, N.C., has seen an explosion in home sales and events, while Trump National GC Los Angeles has seen a double-digit drop in revenue and on-site protests, reflecting a red-blue political divide.
A recent report in The New York Times highlights the political implications on the business side of President Donald Trump’s golf properties.
Business is booming at the Trump National Golf Club – Charlotte in Mooresville, N.C. The real estate office is selling million-dollar homes, the membership roster is nearly maxed out, and the private club is booking a record number of events, including a sold-out “Bag-Lady Luncheon,” where luxury leather handbags were auctioned for a charity that supports military veterans, the Times reported.
“How do we get busier?” asked Jennifer Minton, the club’s controller, during a recent tour of the grounds. “We only have so many weekends.”
It is a very different story in Los Angeles. The Trump National Golf Club there, a public course, has seen a double-digit drop in revenue from golf in the first six months of 2017 compared with a year earlier, according to documents obtained through a public records request. A large crowd assembled this spring, but they were protesters spelling out “RESIST!” with their bodies, the Times reported.
The divergent fortunes of the North Carolina and Los Angeles clubs reflect a broader pattern across President Trump’s business empire: The red-blue political divide is not only informing the president’s policies, it is influencing his family-owned company’s bottom line, the Times reported.
Trump’s most recent financial disclosure statement, a 98-page report in June, showed that the Trump Organization brought in at least $597 million in revenue during his 2016 campaign and the first few months of his presidency, down about 3 percent compared with his previous filing in May 2016. But an analysis by The New York Times of financial records, and interviews with club members and employees, show that most of his golf venues fared better in areas that supported President Trump in last year’s election than in those that did not, the Times reported.
The club here north of Charlotte is deep in Trump territory—the adjacent neighborhood, named the Point, is perhaps best known as home to more than a dozen Nascar drivers and crew chiefs, and precinct records show nearly 70 percent of area voters favored Trump over Hillary Clinton, the Times reported.
“We think of them as family here, not just owners of the club,” said Chuck McAllister, an executive at a global shoe-box manufacturing company, who held a fundraiser for Trump last summer at the golf club. The event, he said, attracted nearly 300 supporters, including North Carolina’s then governor, and raised more than $1.4 million.
Revenues were also rising at the Trump golf clubs in Jupiter and West Palm Beach, Fla., two of the three golf clubs that the family owns in the state. Trump carried Florida in the election. Until the violence in Charlottesville, Va., which generated a wave of cancellations at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., business at that Trump property was also climbing, according to the president’s financial disclosure report, the Times reported.
That report paints a darker picture in states that Trump lost. The Trump SoHo condominium-hotel in New York and the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago, both cities that are liberal strongholds, are seeing signs of hardship, according to two employees briefed on the company’s financials who were not authorized to speak publicly about them, the Times reported.
The red-blue contrast is even more apparent with the golf courses. Revenues over the past year have declined at the Ferry Point golf club in the Bronx, N.Y., at the Bedminster club in New Jersey, and at the club in Westchester County, N.Y., just a few miles from Clinton’s home. Trump lost both states by large margins, the Times reported.
At the club in the Bronx, which is open to the public, golfers played about 2,200 fewer rounds in the most recent fiscal year, an 8 percent drop compared with a year earlier, according to data The Times obtained through a public records request from the City of New York.
The Trump Organization does not dispute that some properties are showing sensitivity to political factors. In June, the company introduced a line of budget-conscious hotels—the first are planned for Mississippi, which Trump won by an overwhelming margin—with a name, American Idea, that echoed the president’s campaign themes, the Times reported.
But in an interview, Eric Trump, who runs the family business along with his brother Donald Jr. and a small group of veteran executives, said that there were other variables that contributed to changes in revenue, including the activities of competitors. The company owns, operates or manages 16 golf courses and a collection of office properties and smaller business ventures. There are also eight stand-alone hotels, including six in the United States, all in major cities that voted for Clinton, the Times reported.
“The company is doing extraordinary well, and I am extremely proud of our respective teams,” Eric Trump said, referring to staff members who run the business operations.
There are exceptions to the red-blue trend. Revenue was down in the last year at Trump National Doral Miami after the PGA Tour decided to move to Mexico a tournament it had sponsored at the club for decades. And the Trump International Hotel in Washington, where residents voted overwhelmingly for Mrs. Clinton, has been doing better than the company had expected, according to financial records that the government mistakenly released this summer, the Times reported.
In the first four months of this year, the hotel generated more than $18 million in revenue and turned a nearly $2 million profit, far eclipsing the $2 million loss the company had been prepared to shoulder. Just five blocks from the White House, the hotel has become a gathering spot for Republican officials and lobbyists, the Times reported.
In New York, another Democratic city, the scene has been quite different. On three recent visits to the hotel in the upscale SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, a reporter found the building’s poolside bar lightly trafficked and its mezzanine restaurant vacant, save for one table of two men. The ground-floor lounge, a dimly lit room decorated with vintage Life Magazine and Playboy covers in a self-aware nod to “the gentlemen of the 1960s,” is closed Sundays through Tuesday, and an Asian restaurant there recently shuttered altogether, the Times reported.
Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, which also voted for Clinton, Trump’s Bedminster club saw a 4 percent dip in revenue, according to the president’s financial disclosure. One member who left the club last year, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still lived in the area, said he departed because of controversial statements Trump made during his presidential campaign, the Times reported.
A hospital, a community nonprofit group and a private school that each previously held events at the club moved their gatherings elsewhere this year, according to a person briefed on Bedminster’s operations but not authorized to discuss them, who said that several longstanding members have either taken leaves of absence or left the club this year. These changes have occurred even as the club was buzzing with activity. Trump, during the presidential transition and in the summer, has frequented the Bedminster club, which also hosted the United States Women’s Open in July, the Times reported.
In Los Angeles, the Trump club is attracting fewer rounds of golf—and less interest from Hollywood producers, who previously shot a range of commercials and movies there, including “Horrible Bosses 2.” In 2015, the Trump course issued 14 permits for film shoots; it fell to five permits in 2016 and four so far this year, according to data obtained from the public records request. The Westchester club in New York has experienced a 6 percent decline in revenues and has lost several members over concerns about politics, according to two former members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the Trumps, the Times reported.
That club has also attracted protesters. In June, hundreds of people marched to protest the Trump Organization’s efforts to lower its local tax bill, with some of the demonstrators reportedly chanting “pay your share,” the Times reported.
“I think people see it as trying to get away with something at the expense of others, and I think that breeds resentment,” said Dana Levenberg, a Democrat who serves as town supervisor in Ossining, N.Y., which includes Briarcliff Manor where the club is. “I certainly cannot speak for everyone in the town, but I do believe people are frustrated about Trump National.”
In North Carolina, the Trumps have been embraced by most area residents. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have lockers at the golf club. The club has a Trump Piranhas swim team and a Trumpeteers summer camp, both of which were filled with children this summer, the Times reported.
“Those ‘Make America Great Again’ hats—there were a lot of them around here,” said Mike Carman who was playing on the course with several friends one recent afternoon.
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