Rancho Palos Verdes is known for landslides. It's also home to Trump's golf course

The Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, pictured in May 2022.

Sept. 13, 2024 3 AM PT

Trump wants to sell lots and develop homes on the property.
The golf course’s original owners went bankrupt after the 18th hole slid into the ocean.

A mile west of Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, a road sign warns: “Use Extreme Caution. Constant Land Movement.”

A few blocks away, a sign just off Palos Verdes Drive South touts the Estates at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, where potential residents can “build your custom dream home.”

Those signs sum up the promise and the peril of Trump’s clifftop, open-to-the-public golf course, which he bought from bankrupted developers in 2002 after the 18th hole slid into the ocean. The club has even played a role in Trump’s New York fraud trial.

On Friday morning, Trump is scheduled to hold a news conference at his club in the beautiful and beleaguered city, which is under a state of emergency issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom this month because of extreme land movement triggered by back-to-back rainy winters.

In recent weeks, hundreds of homes have had their electricity and gas cut off. Neighborhoods near the golf course are under a city-issued evacuation warning, with the fissured land moving about 9 to 12 inches a week and houses cracking and sliding off their foundations.

Last month, a small fire in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood, which was ignited by a power line that fell because of shifting land, underscored the danger.

It is unclear whether Trump will acknowledge the ongoing catastrophe during his visit. City officials say the club is about a half mile from the active slide area. In an email, his campaign said it was “monitoring” conditions in the city.

Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank said he is trying hard to get on Trump’s radar.

“My hope is that when he is in town, I can get on his schedule and give him a debrief,” Cruikshank said. “It would be great to get the attention, no matter who it is.”

As of Thursday afternoon, Cruikshank still had nothing lined up.

Trump is in California this week for a pair of high-dollar fundraisers, including a Thursday night event where tickets were going for $250,000 apiece. He is scheduled to attend a Friday afternoon fundraiser in the Bay Area — hosted, notably, by relatives of Newsom’s wife. The cost: as much as $500,000 per couple.

This week, there was a dissonance between Trump’s club — where the smoothly paved parking lot was filled with Porsches, Teslas and BMWs — and the disaster unfolding just outside it.

On Palos Verdes Drive South, the only way to access the club by car, traffic was brought to a crawl by orange cones, lane closures and flashing utility trucks.

The two-lane road has long been a bumpy, oft-patched asphalt roller coaster. It is paralleled by an above-ground sewage line rigged with flexible pipes designed to move along with the land — but ground movement has left the road marred by cracks, ripples and steep dips.

Just off Palos Verdes Drive South, the sign for the Estates at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles invites potential future residents to build luxury houses. Two newly built cul-de-sacs lead to empty, graded lots, where Trump’s company is actively pursuing plans to build up to 23 homes, said Amy Seeraty, a senior planner for the city.

The Trump Organization, she said, has been working through an extensive list of requirements — like working with the city’s geologist to make sure irrigation does not exacerbate land movement — before it can sell and develop the lots.

“They’re checking them off,” she said of the requirements. “I don’t have an exact date, but they’re getting closer.”

In 2002, Trump paid $27 million for the deeply discounted property, then called Ocean Trails Golf Club. The original developers had gone bankrupt after the 18th hole fell into the Pacific during a 1999 landslide while the course was still under construction.

In 2015, Trump announced he would forgo his plans to build homes on 16 additional lots, instead granting an 11.5-acre conservation easement to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. In a news conference at the time, Trump told officials with the conservancy: “It is my great honor, and enjoy it for infinity, I guess.”

Trump still owns the land, and golfers still use it as a driving range. But the move was praised by community leaders happy to preserve open space on the coastline.

Trump said the donated land was worth “much more than $25 million.” While he framed the donation as charity, it was in his interest for the land to be valued as high as possible because it would have affected the size of the tax break he could claim.

In 2022, the New York state attorney general sued Trump, three of his children and his company, alleging they fraudulently inflated the value of the Rancho Palos Verdes club and conservation easement — along with other Trump properties across the nation.

The aim, the attorney general alleged, was to receive favorable loans and other economic benefits. In February, a judge ordered Trump to pay more than $450 million in penalties in the civil fraud case. Trump has appealed.

In Rancho Palos Verdes, Trump has repeatedly squabbled with locals planting a row of ficus trees without authorization to block the sight of homes he thought were ugly, and battling the California Coastal Commission and the city for a decade over a 70-foot flag pole he erected without a permit.

During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer, his son Eric Trump told hundreds of California delegates and their guests that the club had “the most beautiful views anywhere, the most perfect weather anywhere.”

“Every time I go out there I go, ‘Man, if it wasn’t for the taxes, if it wasn’t for the taxes and the lunacy, I would probably live out here.’”

On Wednesday, the day after Trump’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the formal dining room at the club’s Cafe Pacific was mostly empty. There, dolphins and seashells are painted on the ceiling, the $25 Trump Burger comes with Thousand Island dressing on a Trump-branded brioche bun, and picture windows offer resplendent views of the Pacific Ocean.

Inside the clubhouse store, visitors posed for photos beside $50 red MAGA hats. Framed on a clubhouse foyer was a racy 1990 Playboy magazine cover featuring Trump and Playmate Brandi Brandt, who has his tuxedo jacket wrapped around her otherwise nude body.

He also displays the 2007 resolution — signed by then-Los Angeles City Council President Eric Garcetti — congratulating him for receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Meanwhile, Mayor Cruikshank has turned to a man even wealthier than Trump to ask for help for his troubled city: tech billionaire Elon Musk.

“While our community is resilient, this situation presents a unique opportunity to turn a setback into a showcase of sustainable living,” Cruikshank wrote in a letter to the Tesla founder on Aug. 8 and posted on X, which Musk also owns. Could Tesla, he asked, partner with the city to power the afflicted homes with solar panels and batteries?

Musk’s company responded within three days and quickly set up a meeting, Cruikshank said. City officials are now evaluating proposals for solar-powered batteries and other off-the-grid options to power homes, he said.

As for Palos Verdes Drive South, along with the signs warning of landslides and encouraging people to build their dream homes, there’s yet another sign:

“Emergency sewer repair. Expect delays.”

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.