Jun 9, 2008 5:22 pm US/Eastern
Trump In Scotland To Defend Plans For Golf Resort
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) ―
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Donald Trump told journalists his mother had inspired him to stay with the project, planned near Aberdeen on the country's east coast, despite opposition from environmentalists. (File)
AP
Donald Trump touted his Scottish roots on a visit to his late
mother's childhood home Monday, as he prepared to defend a plan to
build a $2 billion golf resort complex here.
Trump told journalists his mother had inspired him to stay with the
project, planned near Aberdeen on the country's east coast, despite
opposition from environmentalists.
"If it weren't for my mother would I have walked away from this
site? I think probably I would have, yes," he said. "It is really easy
to find a nice piece of land to do something nice on, but Scotland is
special and I wanted to do something special for my mother."
Trump is planning two golf courses, a five-star hotel and hundreds
of houses on the site, but green campaigners say the construction would
hurt the area's delicate sand dunes, home to a number of bird species.
Trump is due to give evidence Tuesday at a public inquiry into the proposed development.
The real estate mogul has not visited his mother's former home in
Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, 50 miles off Scotland's northwest
coast, since he was a child. But he denied he was using the family trip
to promote his plan, saying he had simply been too busy to return until
now.
"You do reach a certain point in life where you think about where
you came from, where your parents are from, and in this case I've been
waiting to do this for years," he said Monday.
Mary MacLeod Trump died in August 2000 at age 88. She was born on
the Isle of Lewis in 1912 and met Fred C. Trump while visiting New York
in the 1930s.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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