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The U.S. Commission of Fine Arts has officially fast-tracked the estimated $400 million proposal to build President Donald Trump’s new White House East Wing ballroom Thursday.
While Thursday’s session was originally intended only for design discussion, Chairman Rodney Mims Cook Jr. moved for an immediate final approval.
“Our sitting president has actually designed a very beautiful structure,” Cook said before the vote. “The United States just should not be entertaining the world in tents.”
The project involves building the ballroom on the site where the East Wing once stood, following its October demolition.
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Six of the seven commissioners voted in favor. Commissioner James McCrery abstained, having served as the project’s architect.
“This is an important thing to the president. It’s an important thing to the nation,” Fine Arts chairman Rodney Mims Cook Jr. said in the panel’s first public hearing on Trump’s proposal earlier this month.
Administrations long before Trump’s complained about having to host State Dinners and major events in temporary structures. The old East Wing dining room had just a 200-seat capacity, according to the White House, making this expansion more than triple the seats and nearly double the square footage of the main White House structure.
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The estimated $400 million project has faced criticism from Democrats, but Trump has vowed the funding to be private and the benefits to be immense.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation had filed a federal lawsuit to halt construction.
“We’re donating a $400 million ballroom, and we got sued not to build it – for 150 years they’ve wanted a ballroom,” Trump said in December. “And we’re giving them, myself and donors are giving them free of charge for nothing. We’re donating a building that’s approximately $400 million.
“I think I’ll do it for less, but it’s 400. I should do it for less. I will do it for less, but just in case they say 400; otherwise, if I go $3 over, the press will say it costs more.”
Despite Thursday’s approval, the project faces further review March 5 by the National Capital Planning Commission, led by a top White House aide.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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