Opulent Mar-a-Lago is now second White House

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Forget Camp David where former White House occupants unwound, entertained guests or met with foreign leaders. Donald Trump has yet to check in at the Maryland Catoctin Mountain Park presidential retreat.

Instead, he’s decamped six weekends at Mar-a-Lago, his 100,000-square-foot palatial winter white house on this tony barrier island since becoming president, and Easter weekend will be the seventh.

This is where he ordered tomahawk missile strikes at the Syrian airport recently while summiting with the president of China. And last month he met with the Japanese leader at Mar-a-Lago.

This, it seems, is where the action is.

It’s where you’ll find sightseers galore, protesters, pro-Trump supporters as well as the posh area resort’s elite and top government figures.

Unless you’re a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club or guest at one of its lavish charity balls, chances are you won’t get near the place when the president is in town.

Land and sea approaches to the 17.5 acre compound are routinely cordoned off by Secret Service, local police and county sheriff officers at that time.

Trump purchased the 124-room estate and its furnishings in 1985 for nearly $10 million. Ten years later he turned it into a private club that his company operates as a business and promotes as an opulent, historic property with 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, 12 fireplaces and three bomb shelters.

One section is sealed off for the private use of his family.

In January, the membership cost was raised to $200,000, double what it was before the election. The Trump company justified the increase, contending $200,000 had been the original price but was reduced to $100,000 during the recent recession. The annual dues/dining fee total, $16,000, hasn’t changed, though.

The club has about 500 members. When the president or family members are in residence, individuals including club members are barred from entry without advance Secret Security screening and clearance.

As Palm Beach condo residents on the same South Ocean Boulevard street as Mar-a-Lago (Spanish meaning “Sea to Lake”), my wife and I attended a couple of lectures there before the election.

Rooms have the feeling and museum-like trappings of a Loire Valley French chateau or palace. There are marble floors, chandeliers, rare Oriental carpets, old paintings and 16th century Flemish tapestries.

Large portraits of Trump in a white tennis sweater and Marjorie Merrieweather Post, the cereal heiress who built Mar-a-Lago in the 1920s, face each other on opposite walls in a large, sumptuous, high-ceilinged room copied from a Venetian palace. There are black-and-white marble floor blocks; ceilings, rooms and hallways with colorful Spanish tiles dating back to the 15th century.

The property was assessed at $32 million last year, putting Trump’s most recent Palm Beach real estate tax bill at $600,426.

Post willed the estate to the U.S. government, and seemingly clairvoyant, stipulated it be used by American presidents and foreign dignitaries. Claiming it had become too costly to maintain as a National Historic Landmark, the government gave the property back to Post heirs who, in turn, sold it to Trump.

Since acquiring the property, he’s added tennis courts, a spa, a croquet court, updated the beach house and spent $9 million building an adjoining 20,000- square-foot Louis XIV ballroom with 40-foot ceilings, glittering chandeliers, furniture and walls with gold leafing.

The ballroom can comfortably accommodate 800 guests, and almost that many, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, were there for the 2005 Donald J. Trump-Melania Knauss wedding reception. Eleven months later the Donald Jr. wedding reception took place.

An added perk for club members and area visitors is a 62-acre, 27-hole golf course and clubhouse Trump built in nearby West Palm Beach, about a 20-minute drive away. And during each of his recent visits, he’s managed to get in a game of golf.

A heliport was built on Mar-a-Lago property last month to allow use of a helicopter to get to his estate from Palm Beach International Airport, a three-mile distance, but he’s yet to use it.

The ornate, rambling main building can be seen from South Ocean Boulevard immediately north of Southern Boulevard and from the banks of the Intracoastal waterway. The front overlooks the Atlantic Ocean and the rear faces the Lake Worth section of the Intracoastal waterway. There are swimming pools beachside and lakeside.

Coast Guard and Secret Service vessels guard both waterway approaches to the estate during the president’s presence.

The main building was designed by the New York architect Marion Sims Wyeth, who also created other Palm Beach mansions, including the Florida governor’s in Tallahassee and Doris Duke’s landmark Shangri La Hawaii estate. He collaborated with Joseph Urban, an Austrian-American interior designer and illustrator who created parrot, monkey, ram and eagle sculptures on the structure’s exterior walls.

Trump would be the first to tell you Mar-a-Lago is one of his most prized possessions and has made him a part-time resident of Palm Beach. It’s about five miles south of the 15-room oceanfront Palm Beach mansion that was John F. Kennedy’s winter white house.

As a brash real estate mogul, the president has been in litigious battles with the nearby airport and Palm Beach County, trying to prevent noisy planes from flying over Mar-a-Lago. Not only are they annoying club members, he’s argued, but they’re damaging his National Historic Landmark property.

Shortly after the election, though, he withdrew his latest suit, seeking $100 million in damages, upon learning the Secret Service won’t allow flights over Mar-a-Lago when he’s there.

Si Liberman, a retired editor of the Asbury Park Sunday Press, lives in Palm Beach.