Washington, DC’s Commission on Fine Arts — which is packed with allies of President Trump — unanimously voted to approve his new White House ballroom on Thursday.
“This is a facility that is desperately needed for over 150 years, and it’s beautiful,” Commission Chair Rodney Mims Cook Jr., whom Trump appointed to the panel, said.
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Thursday’s meeting was scheduled to talk about the design of the project, with a final vote expected at next month’s session. But commissioners moved to go ahead and give it their blessing.
Thomas Luebke, the secretary for the Commission on Fine Arts, attempted to slow down the vote, arguing the expedited vote was “highly unusual” and that normally, the panel waits for more documentation.
“In more than two decades of casework here for me, I’ve never seen as much public engagement on this,” he argued. “We literally have gotten, just in the past week or so, more than 2,000 various messages.”
The panel is one of two committees that must provide approval. The National Capital Planning Commission, headed by White House staff secretary William Scharfis expected to follow suit. Its next meeting is scheduled for March 5.
Trump had fired the entire Commission on Fine Arts panel last year and moved to restaff it with loyalists
“The Commission of Fine Arts just approved, unanimously, 6 to 0, with one recusal because he had a conflict in that he worked professionally on the job, the White House Ballroom. Great accolades were paid to the building’s beauty and scale,” the president boasted in a signed Truth Social post Thursday.
The one recusal came from the first architect Trump tapped for the project, James McCrery II, who had pitched multiple smaller designs for the lavish ballroom. The president insisted it needed to be bigger, and McCrery stepped back from his perch as the lead architect.
The 90,000-square-foot ballroom is bigger than the White House itself and will stand where the East Wing once stood.
Shalom Baranes has since taken the reins from McCrery II as head architect for the project.
The White House is also rumored to be renovating the president’s nuclear bunker, officially known as the “Presidential Emergency Operations Center,” which sits below the ballroom construction site.
Trump has now estimated that his ritzy ballroom, which is being funded through private donations, will cost about $400 million. The real estate mogul has frequently crowed about how it will be “impenetrable” with “drone-proof ceilings” and bullet-proof glass.
The president, who owns many ballrooms on his various properties, has long sought to build a ballroom in the White House, having offered to pay for one during the Obama administration.
Construction on it began last year following the teardown of the East Wing, historically the domain of the first lady.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation, which Congress has entrusted with preserving historic buildings, has since sued to stop construction of the ballroom. A court decision in the case is pending.
