The renderings are complete, the architects and contractors have been hired. After at least 15 years of talking about it, President Trump is building a ballroom at the White House. According to the White House, the work will begin this September, with a price tag of $200 million.
"President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail," said White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in a statement on Thursday. "The President and the Trump White House are fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserving the special history of the White House while building a beautiful ballroom that can be enjoyed by future Administrations and generations of Americans to come."
The largest event space at the White House now is the East Room, which seats about 200 for dinner. So, for decades, when the White House needed more capacity for a state dinner or other large event, they would take it outdoors, usually putting up large fancy tents, complete with flooring and chandeliers.
Once completed, the White House says the new ballroom will seat 650 guests.
"The White House State Ballroom will be a much-needed and exquisite addition of approximately 90,000 total square feet of innately designed and carefully crafted space," according to a statement read by press secretary Karoline Leavitt. She said the cost would be footed by Trump himself as well as "other patriot donors." Leavitt said construction would finish "long before" the end of Trump's term.
It will be located where the East Wing of the White House currently sits, displacing offices. That space has been renovated many times over the years, according to the White House statement.
For Trump, this marks the culmination of a long quest to solve the problem of state dinners being held in tents he considers unsightly and overpriced. Back in 2010, he called David Axelrod, an adviser to then-President Barack Obama, to offer his services building a ballroom.
" 'You know, you have these state dinners and you have them in these little tents,' " Axelrod recalled Trump telling him. "And he said, 'You know, I build ballrooms. I build the greatest ballrooms and you can come down to Florida to see them.' "
Axelrod handed the pitch off to someone else, who didn't follow up. It's something he says he regrets, though, not because he thought a ballroom was a good idea.
"Tent never bothered me," Axelrod said.
But Trump never forgot the slight. Earlier this year, speaking to a group of female athletes in the East Room, Trump bemoaned the lack of a larger space.
"This was going to be the reception room. I was going to build a beautiful, beautiful ballroom like I have at Mar-a-Lago," Trump said. "It was going to cost about $100 million. I offered to do it, and I never heard back."
This past weekend, as Trump was preparing to hash out the final details of a trade deal with European Council President Ursula von der Leyen at his Turnberry golf course in Scotland, he took a detour to boast about the cavernous room where they were sitting.
"You know, we just built this ballroom, and we're building a great ballroom at the White House," Trump said.
Trump told her he was uniquely qualified to bring a ballroom to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
"No president knew how to build a ballroom," Trump told von der Leyen. "I could take this one, drop it right down there, and it would be beautiful."
It turns out, Trump was already well on his way to executing on a different ballroom at the people's house. The White House says that in recent weeks, Trump has held several meetings with the White House staff, National Park Service, the White House Military Office and the U.S. Secret Service to discuss the design and other planning details. On Thursday afternoon, he told reporters the ballroom is a "great legacy project."
This is just the latest example of Trump efforts to put an enduring stamp on the White House. Trump has already made the Oval Office much more golden, added new medallions to the light fixtures in the Cabinet Room, laid paving stones over where the grass used to be in the Rose Garden and erected giant new flagpoles on the north and south lawns.
The Rose Garden project is on pace to be completed in early August. The Trust for the National Mall is raising private donations to cover the cost of the project.
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