Donald Trump's plan for £750m Scottish golf resort put on hold
US tycoon says golf course will open next year – but complex featuring luxury villas and five-star hotel postponed for now
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Monday 20 June 2011 19.31 BST
Donald Trump has been forced to postpone his plan to create the "world's greatest" golf resort in Scotland, complete with five-star hotel and luxury villas, because of the global financial crisis.
The billionaire property developer flew into Aberdeen on Monday on his latest luxury jet, a Boeing 757-200 fitted out with a master bedroom and five kitchens, to announce that his championship standard 18-hole golf course overlooking the North Sea would open for play in July next year.
Before touring the first completed holes, Trump said he had spent £50m to £60m of his own money carving the "amazing" course from the vast dunes, and would start taking advance bookings in 10 days. He hoped that Sir Sean Connery, one of the earliest backers of the resort, would open it for him.
"We have been inundated from New York and Scotland from people who want to come and play the course," he said. "Thousands of people have been calling: 'how can we play it?'"
But the tycoon said that the full scheme, a £750m complex featuring a luxury hotel, Trump Boulevard, a golf academy, a second course and timeshare apartments, had been bunkered by the recession.
Trump said "the world has crashed" since he first bought the Menie estate and dunes in 2005, provoking a long-running battle with local residents, councillors and environmental groups about his proposals, which has involved heavily altering the legally protected rare dunes.