Trump takes the high road to overcome golf handicap

I'M A billionaire, get me into here. American property mogul Donald Trump is believed to have bought a 1,200 acre farm to build an access road into his proposed £300m golf resort on the Aberdeenshire coast.

Trump announced his intentions to build the "world's best" golf course on the 800-acre Menie Estate, 10 miles north of Aberdeen, earlier this year after buying the land from its American owner.

But the scale of the resort - a 500-bedroom hotel and more than 200 houses as well as two 18-hole golf courses - means that a new access road from the busy A90 is likely to be required if planning permission is to be granted.

He is now understood to have bought a farm to the north of the estate to allow easier access to the huge development. The current roads onto the estate are narrow tracks with bends that lead past homes that were not part of the initial land deal.

The New York-based Trump Organisation is expected to apply for planning permission within the next fortnight. A Trump spokeswoman has told local newspapers that the "finishing touches" were being put to the ambitious project.

Local residents said one farm immediately to the north of the Menie Estate may have come onto the market privately after the death of its owner earlier this year.

One said: "Owning this land would give you much easier access to the estate off the A90. The problem with the current roads is that they run past houses and there are bad bends.

"It is farmland at the moment but if Trump wants to build more houses in the future then this would be the ideal place to do it."

Details of the new land purchase first emerged in the New York Post in a one-paragraph story in the gossip column on September 29.

The article read: "Donald Trump in a kilt? The mogul tells us he just bought 1,200 more acres of property to add to the 800 acres he'd already purchased in Aberdeen, Scotland, to transform into a luxury golf course and hotel complex."

Bill Hoffman, who wrote the story for the New York Post, said it was typical of Trump to start adding to a purchase as soon as he bought it. "He starts small and just expands and expands. This is what he did in the New York area and what he is doing in Los Angeles. Wherever he buys, he just likes to have a bigger and bigger empire."

Lora McCluskey, Trump's spokeswoman in Scotland, refused to confirm or deny the report.

The tycoon originally wanted to apply for planning permission last May but the project timetable was allowed to slip to give time to consultants to prepare the best possible submission to the local planning authorities. He is likely to face opposition from environmental groups because part of one of the golf courses will ruin sand dunes in a protected wildlife area.

But important backing has come from Scottish Enterprise and the business community in the northeast.

Although First Minister Jack McConnell has met Trump in New York to discuss inward investment into Scotland, he denies directly discussing the golf project. Such a move would have left him open to charges that he had breached the ministerial code of conduct.

But councillors in Aberdeenshire have made clear that despite the influential backing they will not be "steamrollered" into making a decision in Trump's favour.

John Loveday, the chairman of the Formartine area committee which will discuss the plan, said the application would be treated like any other. He said: "A decision on the plan will be made on its merits and nothing else."

In announcing his plan earlier this year, Trump said that he had chosen Scotland because his mother had been born on Lewis but he would take the project elsewhere if he encountered opposition. A renewable energy company has already scaled down plans for an offshore windfarm in the area after complaints from the US businessman that it would spoil the views from his golf course.

Trump demonstrated his unwillingness to comply with local planning restrictions last week in a row over an American flag he had installed on his Mar-a-Lago Club property on the ocean front in Palm Beach, Florida.

Town code requirements stipulate that a flagpole should be a maximum 42ft in height and the flag 6ft by 4ft in dimension. But the size of Trump's Stars and Stripes is 25ft by 15ft on an 80ft flagpole.

Town officials have asked him to take it down but Trump said: "Obviously, permits are not necessary to put up an American flag. It's freedom of speech. I'm a great American."