So what’s the deal with the weird dumping of dirt on the ground between the 6th and 9th hole at the East Potomac Golf Course? I don’t care about golf but I was curious, so here you go.
Trump is putting pressure on the National Links Trust because he wants to take over management of the historic golf courses in Washington, D.C. They were served a notice of default on October 29th, although there was no reasons as to why, or what they could do to resolve it. “According to terms of the lease, National Links Trust had 45 days to address any concerns, which means the nonprofit group could lose operational control of the East Potomac, Rock Creek and Langston courses next week.”
Apparently one of the ways that they could avoid going into default was to agree to have a bunch of dirt dumped onto the golf course. As usual, capitulation gets you nothing.
Last week, the Trump Administration sent notice that the Trust was in default of the lease, which could lead to termination. This letter came just weeks after the Trump administration told the NLT that it might be found in default if it did not consent to the delivery of a large pile of dirt to East Potomac from the demolition of the White House’s East Wing. Trump told the Wall Street Journal that if the nonprofit doesn’t address the alleged violations of its lease by the end of the month, then the courses will revert to the Trump administration’s control.
Five years ago the National Links Trust was awarded a 50 year contract to renovate all three of Washington D.C.’s historic golf courses. Read this article for more details, there’s quite a bit of indepth information on golf courses which is great if you care about that kind of thing.
Basically, what this amounts to is that Trump is impatient with the pace of traditional renovation and restoration, and has decided to brute force his way through it like he does everything else. They both want to improve it, but their idea of ‘improvement’ is very different. The National Links Trust wants to preserve the history of the golf course for future generations. Trump wants to gold-plate it, cover it in marble, and reduce the amount of holes so he can put more facilities in it.
