President Donald Trump on Wednesday raised the estimate of his planned White House ballroom, saying that the project would cost $300 million — up from his initial claim of $200 million — and defended the decision to tear down the East Wing amid widespread complaints.
“In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, showing off renderings of the project and saying that the new ballroom would be connected by a “glass bridge” to the main White House structure. “We don’t touch the White House.”
Trump also said that “the military” is closely involved in the project, which he said would be paid “100 percent by me and some friends of mine.”
The president said he had been transparent about the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom, which would be nearly twice the footprint of the 55,000-square-foot main section of the White House next door. Watchdog groups, politicians and even some conservative commentators have questioned why Trump has moved so quickly to tear down the iconic wing that served as a starting point for White House tours and home to first ladies’ offices.
Trump criticized past renovations to the East Wing, including a second story he called “not very nice.” He suggested he didn’t want it to “hurt” his new ballroom, a feature he has wanted to add to the White House since before he was president.
“It was never thought of as being much,” Trump said. “It was a very small building.”
White House officials previously said that the project will be funded by private donations, including from wealthy individuals and large companies that have contracts with the federal government, including Amazon, Lockheed Martin and Palantir Technologies. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The donations are being managed by the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit that helped manage such federal projects as the restoration of the Washington Monument after it was damaged in a 2011 earthquake.
White House officials said Tuesday to expect a full-scale teardown of the East Wing, defending it as a “modernization” of the building. They also touted past renovations, circulating a fact sheet that argued Trump was continuing a “proud presidential legacy” of changing the White House grounds — although the swimming pool, tennis pavilion and other past projects they highlighted pale next to the scope of the president’s planned ballroom. Trump said this week that the ballroom will seat nearly 1,000 people, up from an earlier estimate of about 650.
The White House said Tuesday it would soon send ballroom plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which is required to review any external construction projects at the White House and will decide whether to approve the new building. The 12-member board is now led by a majority of Trump allies, including its chairman, Trump staff secretary Will Scharf.
