Trump’s Miami Resort Wins Approval for $3 Billion Condo Project

Donald Trump will leave Mar-a-Lago and head to Washington next week to be sworn in as president. On his way out of South Florida, his family business scored a long-sought local victory.

In a 4-0 vote on Wednesday, the Doral City Council approved the Trump Organization’s plans to build five 20-story condo towers at the Trump National Doral resort, a 600-acre Miami area property that’s currently home to a hotel and four golf courses. The project is expected to cost $3 billion.

Eric Trump, the president-elect’s second-born son in charge of day-to-day business at the family firm, was in attendance, posing for photos and taking questions from a group of young girls in the local scout troop.

Trump’s win in Doral is a sign that his political triumph is already bearing fruit for the business that bears his name. The approval followed a protracted and at times very public effort by the Trump Organization — and the president-elect himself — to court officials in a suburb of 80,000 residents that sits between Miami International Airport and the Everglades.

“It actually took Trump less time to become president again than it did for me to get this thing approved,” said Felix Lasarte, founder and managing partner of the Lasarte Law Firm, who shepherded the project.

Value Bump

Constructing taller buildings and retail space at the resort, which Trump first purchased in 2008, will likely significantly boost its value, which the Bloomberg Billionaires Index currently estimates is $350 million. In August, the city council narrowly approved the first vote to change zoning.

One of the holdouts was Doral’s Republican mayor, Christi Fraga, who was up for re-election in November.

Several weeks after that initial vote, Fraga appeared at a Latino-focused Trump campaign event at the Doral resort, where he praised her: “You’ve been great, thank you so much for everything,” Trump said.

Fraga voted on Wednesday to approve the condo project, saying that concessions about traffic flow and the Trumps’ collaborative attitude were sufficient to win her support.

“They’ve made every attempt to be considerate of the impacts and to be good neighbors,” she said. “They’ve bent over backward. There will be an impact on our community, but Doral is in a development stage.”

Another backer of the project was new City Councilor Nicole Reinoso, a Fraga ally who won her seat in a closely contested election battle that culminated in a December runoff. Trump, fresh off his own victory in the presidential race, endorsed her. (She said his backing didn’t affect her vote.)

“Trump holds the highest office in the nation. She was endorsed by him — of course she’s going to win,” said Juan Carlos Esquivel, who lost to Reinoso.

Esquivel, a Republican, said he was in favor of the proposal, but thought the Trumps needed to give up some land to create more lanes in the surrounding streets and that the city needed better transit infrastructure before adding more housing.

“I couldn’t win against Goliath,” he said.

Another way the Trumps rallied support for their project: Injecting themselves into a heated battle over what to do with Miami-Dade County’s trash.

Councilman Rafael Pineyro, the other vote flipped from August, said Eric Trump’s intervention over a proposed incinerator in Doral helped him make his decision.

Pineyro, who has consistently railed against the project and called it an example of overdevelopment, said the Trump Organization was “really interested in working out” his concerns.

“We’re planning something incredible,” Eric Trump said after the meeting, in between photo ops. “We dump our hearts into it.”