How Trump scored a big tax break for conserving a golf range
When Donald Trump bought his seaside golf course in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb in 2002, he vowed to surround it with “some of the most beautiful houses in California.” But the 261-acre property on the Palos Verdes Peninsula had a problem. Geologists working for the city would not clear part of it for home-building because of unstable soil underlying the course, built on a landslide-prone bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The denials infuriated Trump, who lobbied and litigated for eight years in a failed effort to reverse the geologists’ findings and secure development approvals, according to interviews with planners and geologists and a Reuters review of public records and court filings. Trump eventually abandoned a plan to build 16 homes and turned instead to the tax code to offset the lost profits - securing a $25 million tax deduction in exchange for a promise not to develop the land. The agreement with a nonprofit conservancy allowed him to continue using the land as a driving...