They plan to revitalize the Washington, D.C., municipal facility. President Trump has other plans

Washington, D.C., is home to three 18-hole public courses, and Donald Trump regularly flies over one of them on Marine One, the Blue Course at East Potomac Golf Links, a Walter Travis layout that has been a mainstay for average golfers in the nation’s capital for nearly a century.

For the past five years, a group of golf philanthropists operating a nonprofit business as the National Links Trust has methodically raised funds and implemented endless red tape in the name of restoring three courses: Rock Creek, Langston and East Potomac. They went in that order because East Potomac Field, while worn out, was more than breaking even, Rock Creek Field had been dead for years, and Langston Field was somewhere in between. The doctor will go to the area where there is bleeding.

That’s when.

In interviews on Monday, two founders of the National Links Trust said Trump, aided and abetted by Interior Department officials and his own golf interests, was planning to step in and kick the National Links Trust out, as first reported by the National Links Trust. wall street journal late last week. (The properties are essentially owned by the National Park Service, an agency of the Department of the Interior.) Co-founders Will Smith and Mike McCartin said the National Links Trust has 45 years left on its 50-year lease on the three properties, which will be terminated. The NLT had expected Tom Doak to do a simple tee-to-green renovation of the blue course at no cost, much like Gil Hanse is currently doing at Rock Creek and Beau Welling is doing at Langston. They now expect Tom Fazio, one of the preferred course architects for Trump Golf Properties, to get the job.

“We’re completely devastated,” Smith said Monday. “We believe that golf itself is a public good and that golf teaches many great life values,” Smith said. It’s this sentiment that the organization draws inspiration from. If you look at Trump’s golf values, you’ll see that they are very different, as his courses are dramatic and gorgeous, often with high waterfalls, perfect fairways and hot dogs around the turns, which, according to Trump, are the best in the world.

In contrast, Smith and McCartin want the Blue Course to remain what it has always been, a user-friendly course with modest green fees, but in a future, new and improved state, a course with more interesting topography and design features, unobstructed views of the Potomac River and healthier grass. It was their understanding that Trump, working with Fazio, wanted a course suitable for championship play, with a lake and mounds. That’s an easy prediction to make, since that’s a broad description of most Trump courses. “We don’t want it to be expensive and fancy,” Smith said. In golf, as in other fields, being expensive and fancy is Trump’s advantage. as trump said Magazine”, “I think what we have to do is just build some different things and build them in government. “

Did you know that Trump oversaw the demolition of the East Wing of the White House at an alarming rate and approved the first and now second set of plans to build a lavish ballroom in its place? “I think they want to do the same thing” in East Potomac, with speed and decisiveness, with little public input, Smith said.

Text messages and calls to William Doffermyre, an Interior Department official familiar with Trump’s thinking on the project, were not returned. An interview request was neither texted to Tom Fazio nor emailed to the White House Press Office. Last week, Fazio told GOLF.com that he had a two-hour lunch with Trump at the White House in November. He was not asked at the time whether he might be involved in the Blue Course effort, but he did note that Trump was proud of taking dirt from the East Wing project and dumping it behind a chain-link fence at the East Potomac golf course. “He was a construction worker,” Fazio said.

The National Links Trust is expected to be launched within a few months as Trump begins to show interest in the blue course in early August. Smith and McCartin believed, based on what they were told by government officials and others, that their leases would be terminated because they had not met certain established goals by certain dates. If that’s true, these people say, it’s only because they’re working “by the book,” including dozens of community and institutional presentations, obtaining environmental assessments and approvals from the Fine Arts Commission, the National Capital Planning Commission and the Office of Historic Preservation. Anyone who has watched Trump knows that he is a big-picture person who is attracted to big messages and big themes. Building a golf course on federal land is a painstaking process, or so it can be.

There is no obvious template for what the National Links Trust hopes to do. Many active golfers are familiar with the major renovation projects at Harding Park in San Francisco, West Palm Beach Park, and Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia. Smith and McCartin said the projects are not models for their vision of a blue course. “When you design a course that offers a $250 green fee for tourists and a $50 green fee for locals, it still has to meet the expectations of the golfer who pays $250,” Smith said. In other words, the design, ambience and amenities are all stunning. McCartin grew up on blue courts. He wants golfers out there to experience what he experienced: quality, relaxing golf at an affordable price.

“We went through the hard work of determining why this work, overall, is a public good,” Smith said. “What we’re trying to say is, this is what our project is and this is the impact it’s going to have on you. What the president has done is allow himself to circumvent the public engagement process.

“We’re waiting for the termination letter,” Smith said.

National Links Trust has several strong and accomplished attorneys who provide assistance on a pro bono basis. In Washington, D.C. alone, the Department of the Interior has 200 attorneys.

“We’re having a holiday party tonight,” Smith said Monday afternoon. He said he received a $50,000 annual stipend for his work with the NLT, most of which was donated to the trust. “We’re going to go out with a bang.”

Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com