Donald Trump proposed a $10 million rehab of the property, which would remain open to the public but under the control of Trump’s hospitality arm, and the chairman of the Miami-Dade County Commission recommended it be rejected. The commission will vote on the plan next week.
The chairman of the MIami-Dade County Commission has come out against Donald Trump’s proposal to take over the county’s Crandon Golf at Key Biscayne (Fla.) golf course, a significant setback for Trump’s effort to add the parkland to his portfolio of golf properties, the Miami (Fla.) Herald reported.
Trump proposed a $10 million rehab of the course, which would remain open to the public but under the control of Trump’s hospitality arm. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez exchanged letters with Trump about the proposal and met a top aide of the mogul about the proposal, but then recused himself due to lobbying work one of his sons performed for Trump at the city level, the Herald reported.
Gimenez’s withdrawal from the process triggered a provision in the county chart that left Jean Monestime, chairman of the County Commission, in the position to offer a recommendation to his fellow commissioners on the Trump proposal. On Tuesday night, Monestime’s office released a resolution that recommends his fellow commissioners reject the plan, the Herald reported.
The “Crandon Park Golf Course is a treasured, public golf course in Miami-Dade County and is consistently ranked as one of the top public golf courses in the nation,” Monestime’s proposed resolution reads.
If the resolution is approved at next week’s County Commission meeting, Trump would receive a refund on any unspent dollars from a $25,000 deposit he paid the county last year to consider what was considered an “unsolicited” proposal. Rules governing proposals not sought by a formal request from the government require the proposer to file a deposit, the Herald reported.
Representatives for Trump were not immediately available for comment Tuesday night. In proposing a Crandon deal, he described the course as tired and neglected, while opponents called it a popular public course that did not need a rescue, the Herald reported.
Submitted last summer but made public by the Miami Herald in February, Trump’s proposal includes $1 million in design fees to create a new layout for the 1972 course. Over 18 months, his team would spend $9 million replacing all bunkers, tees, greens, fairways, and the clubhouse. His plan includes drastic trimming of the mangroves that currently block the course’s view of Biscayne Bay, transforming a sleepy restaurant into a thriving hospitality operation, and returning Crandon to the circuit of professional golf tournaments, the Herald reported.
In exchange for the upgrades, Trump proposed a 99-year management agreement. Crandon would remain a public course within the county’s parks system, but with Trump’s company serving as the operator, the Herald reported.
Monestime’s thumbs down for the Trump plan does not kill the effort, but adds another hurdle for what was already an uphill fight. Trump needs a rewrite of the park’s master plan to win a management contract, and was already facing resistance on the commission. Xavier Suarez, the county commissioner whose district includes Crandon, came out early against the idea, the Herald reported.
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