Trump Sues Palm Beach Over Airport Expansion

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Jul 21st 2010 at 6:01PM

Usually I hear about Donald Trump being sued but this time he's going on the offensive in Palm Beach. He has filed a lawsuit suing Palm Beach County over the planned expansion at Palm Beach International Airport. Trump doesn't want the airport to have a second commercial runway and filed suit to block the proposal. Why is Trump against the airport? The flight path would take planes over Trump's Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago estate.

"They are wanting to spend, by the time they finish, over $1 billion to add a runway that's totally unnecessary," Trump told local station WPBF 25 News in a telephone interview. "In order to add the runway, they have to rip down hundreds of millions of dollars in buildings that have just been built where they store the airplanes and offices." Trump says the runway is unnecessary because there is less air traffic and that there is already another runway that could be expanded.

Trump also wants former airport director Bruce Pelly to pay damages caused by jets flying over Trump's home. Trump had previously filed a lawsuit in 1995 saying that noise and exhaust from the jets caused damage to the home. That suit was settled with a deal that had the county agreeing to keep noise levels from rising in the future. As part of the deal, Trump built a luxury golf course on county land that the county agreed to lease to Trump.

Tags: donald trump, Mar-a-Lago, palm