US President Donald Trump has directed contractors to redo weeks of work on his new White House helipad, unhappy with its appearance and questioning whether the slope of the South Lawn beneath it needs to be levelled, according to two people who spoke to the Washington Post on condition of anonymity to discuss his private comments.
Photographs obtained by the newspaper show workers dismantling a 100-foot-wide presidential seal carved from granite that had only recently begun taking shape, alongside images taken by the Associated Press documenting crews stripping back the installation. The setback follows weeks in which contractors worked around the clock on Trump’s orders to finish the project on an accelerated timeline.
Donald Trump Helipad Changes: Why Is Trump Unhappy With The Original Design?
Trump has expressed a preference for a landing pad that sits level with the horizon rather than following the natural downward slant of the South Lawn, prompting contractors to disassemble their progress and weigh whether the fix requires altering the grading of the lawn itself.
Federal Aviation Administration guidance does not require helipads to be perfectly horizontal, though surfaces are typically expected to remain flat enough to allow for water runoff. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle defended the project’s necessity, telling The Hill that the White House had “desperately” needed a proper helipad that would allow the president to land safely while protecting the South Lawn’s grass from what he described as the fierce exhaust fumes of Marine One.
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Contractor Clark Construction received a last-minute demand in early July to complete the helipad by 17th September, adding an estimated $875,000 to the project’s cost, after officials indicated Trump wanted the pad ready for what was described as an upcoming state visit. That request followed by only days Trump’s invitation to Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Washington on 24th September, according to the Post’s reporting. The helipad itself is being funded by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin that manufactures the Marine One fleet, at an estimated cost of up to $6 million.
Donald Trump Helipad Changes: How Does This Fit Into Trump’s Wider Building Spree?
The helipad forms part of a roughly $13 million renovation package that also includes work on the South Portico and the White House driveway, and sits alongside several other concurrent projects Trump has pursued across the capital, including a $600 million ballroom he has repeatedly promoted publicly and separate security upgrades to the White House’s front entrance.
Trump had previously explained his rationale for the project in blunter terms, saying of Sikorsky’s funding arrangement, “when I heard they were paying the cost, I went out and said, ‘Let’s do a beauty. Let’s not just do a piece of concrete and paint it white.'”
The helipad’s troubles echo separate difficulties encountered on another Trump-backed renovation nearby, after the Department of Justice recently acknowledged in court that peeling in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool’s lining stemmed from flawed work by contractors Trump had personally selected. With construction still underway, Trump has continued using the nearby Ellipse as a temporary landing site for Marine One, and it remains unclear how much the latest alterations will add to the helipad’s final cost or whether the project can still meet its September deadline.
