From the archive: Trump threat to ditch £300m Scottish golfing resort - 1 April, 2006

MULTI-BILLIONAIRE tycoon Donald Trump was last night heading for a show-down with environmental campaigners over £300 million plans for a world-class golf resort near Aberdeen.

The businessman, whose mother was born on Lewis, warned his championship course, five-star hotel, golf academy and 500 holiday homes would be scrapped unless proposals for a nearby offshore wind farm were abandoned.

He said his Trump Organisation had chosen the location – an 800-acre stretch of sand dunes on the Menie Estate, near Balmedie – after looking at 211 rival sites around the world, and that he would pull out of the deal immediately if it became mired in planning concerns. “Either this will happen very quickly or it won’t happen at all,” he said yesterday in an exclusive interview with The Scotsman.