In the discreet and wealthy hamlet of Bedford, N.Y., where horses graze on the grounds of 19th Century estates, homeowners say the last thing they want is a fast-talking, ostentatious, self-promoting new neighbor.
In other words, Donald Trump.
The famed developer’s plans to build a multimillion-dollar project on a spectacular 200-acre hilltop property has caused the closest thing to an uproar this subdued community has ever known. Committees have been formed. Lawyers have been retained. One local newspaper observed: “Not how we operate.”
Of course, the moneyed elite is always trying to resist encroachment into its privileged enclaves. But in this case, Trump isn’t talking about luring hoi polloi with a flashy all-night casino or rows of tract housing. If anything, his project will attract even more mega-rich to Bedford, a 300-year-old town just an hour’s drive north of Manhattan.
The plans call for an astonishingly exclusive golf club (membership fee: $250,000, plus annual dues) and a cluster of 11 new supermansions near the 15th hole.
The problem, it seems, is him.
“Trump just doesn’t fit in here,” says Margaret Dudley, stopping at the Bedford Gourmet to pick up some peach juice and a half-pint of artichoke-and-mushroom soup. She mentions Trump’s casinos and his high-profile social life:
“We’re low-key in Bedford. He’s too flashy and glitzy. He’s not in keeping with our style.”
Trump has a quick answer that is in keeping with his style: “If they’re complaining, I’ll very gladly build 88 houses up there,” he says, adding: “Yes, that’s a threat.”
At the moment, Trump is still trying to secure the necessary permits for what he claims will be “the greatest golf club in the world–better make that one of the greatest golf clubs in the world.” He apparently is ready for the battle with the myriad planning boards and neighborhood associations in Bedford and the three other towns his property straddles.
Sweeping one arm toward the window of his 26th-floor corner office in his eponymous Manhattan tower, he boasts: “I’ve gotten zoning for everything I’ve ever tried.”
Trump predicts it will take about 18 months to get the Bedford project approved. Local officials, who are now beginning a state-ordered environmental review, decline to speculate on the final result or the timing.
Officially, it isn’t Trump’s personality that has the local groups up in arms. They are arguing that the proposed golf links will leach pesticides into their drinking water and attract too much traffic along their bucolic roads. They complain that the proposed new residences, at 15,000 to 20,000 square feet each, will seem ridiculously oversized on lots that could be as small as two acres under local zoning rules. They fret that old oaks will be felled to make way for the championship 18-hole golf course.
“Weddings and bar mitzvahs. It’s a quiet town, and he has all these splashy things. We don’t want all the cars,” says Debra Hamilton, who lives in the adjoining town of Armonk.
Dorothy “Dot” Fallon, who has lived near the site for nine years, says: “I’m a golfer, and I know that golf courses are constantly being treated with chemicals.”
Teri Burke, who like most area residents depends on well water, fears that the golf course would “not only pollute the water but reduce the quantity.”
Lloyd Bedford Cox Jr., an insurance agent whose family has lived in Bedford since the 1850s, says “traffic is certainly a concern.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has had to contend with neighbors hissing over a proposed residential development. Last year, suburban New Yorkers raised environmental concerns and other challenges to his plans to build luxury homes on an island in Long Island Sound; this year, he dropped the proposal, citing excessive costs.
Two years ago, residents of Palm Beach, Fla., complained about the prospect of wild parties when Trump announced plans to turn his mansion, Mar-a-Lago, into the private club that it is today.
The developer suspects something else lurks behind the locals’ high-toned objections:
“Everybody wants to shoot at me because it’s me.”
He starts trimming the nail of his pinkie with a gold clipper.
“They’re saying, `Let’s fight Trump because it’s Trump.’ They think it’s glamorous. It gives them something to do.”
Trump has lately been on a buying spree after emerging from a brush with near bankruptcy three years ago. Among his recent purchases were two office buildings in Manhattan’s rebounding financial district.
Concerning Bedford, he says, “If Joe Smith wanted to build a golf course, nobody would say a thing.” He adds: “But if Joe Smith built it, nobody would use it, and it would be a failure. The fact is, this project has been very well received by most people.”
Indeed, he isn’t without allies in the area and counts among his friends such local notables as 1980s takeover artist Nelson Peltz and music executive Thomas Mottola (whose wife is pop singer Mariah Carey). Trump plans to host a $250-a-plate Halloween masquerade party-cum-political-fund-raiser for Jeanine Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, on the property. He has hired Ms. Pirro’s well-connected husband, Albert, as his lead lawyer on the project.
The property in question was originally the home of Eugene Meyer, an early 20th Century financier and former owner of the Washington Post. (His daughter, Katharine Graham, is now chairman of the Post’s executive committee, and her son, Donald, is the newspaper’s publisher.)
At the center of the property rises a 55,000-square-foot, 20-bedroom neo-Georgian mansion, complete with a tiled indoor swimming pool and an antique bowling alley.
Trump bought the entire estate, known as Seven Springs, last December for $7.5 million from Rockefeller University, which had used the main house as a conference center.
Though it had been on the market for a year and was viewed as something of a white elephant, local real-estate experts agree he got it for a steal: The price of the average home in Bedford is $413,350, and larger properties there routinely sell for many times that amount.
The 80-year-old main house now stands empty. Trump auctioned off most of its previous furnishings and says he expects to spend $5 million renovating it into a clubhouse so that 200 well-heeled members can drift between wood-paneled locker rooms, a walk-in humidor and a dining room with antique bronze chandeliers.
The proposed golf course is expected to cost another $10 million. Its fairways, hidden from the road, will offer views of the surrounding hills, an adjoining nature preserve and nearby Byram Lake.
As a source of local drinking water, the lake is a focus of neighbors’ worries; but Trump’s project manager, Dominic “Dino” Bradlee, says Trump has hired “an army of environmentalists” to make sure the golf course won’t pollute it.
