Donald Trump has replaced the architect originally selected to oversee his $300m planned gilded ballroom.<\/p>\n
According to<\/a> the Washington Post, which first reported the news on Thursday and cited three people familiar with the matter, architect James McCrery II and his boutique firm had been leading the project for more than three months, up until late October.<\/p>\n The president and McCrery disagreed at times, particularly over Trump\u2019s interest in expanding the 90,000-sq-ft ballroom\u2019s size, the Washington Post reported. However, it was ultimately the firm\u2019s limited staff and missed deadlines that prompted the change, one person said.<\/p>\n It is unclear whether McCrery chose to step aside voluntarily. However, one source noted that he and Trump parted on good terms.<\/p>\n Trump has now selected Shalom Baranes as the project\u2019s new architect, which the White House confirmed. Baranes, whose previous work includes significant federal projects such as the main Treasury building near the White House, received strong praise in a written statement from the White House spokesperson David Ingle.<\/p>\n \u201cAs we begin to transition into the next stage of development on the White House Ballroom, the administration is excited to share that the highly talented Shalom Baranes has joined the team of experts to carry out President Trump\u2019s vision on building what will be the greatest addition to the White House since the Oval Office \u2013 the White House Ballroom,\u201d Ingle said.<\/p>\n \u201cShalom is an accomplished architect whose work has shaped the architectural identity of our nation\u2019s capital for decades and his experience will be a great asset to the completion of this project,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n According to the White House, McCrery will continue to remain a consultant on the project.<\/p>\n In October, Trump received widespread criticism<\/a> following satellite images<\/a> that showed a completely demolished East Wing to pave way for the ballroom, contradicting Trump\u2019s earlier promise that the existing building would not be touched.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n That same month,Trump fired<\/a> all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts, an independent federal agency in charge of reviewing the ballroom project and a proposed \u201cArc de Trump<\/a>\u201d in Washington DC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has replaced the architect originally selected to oversee his $300m planned gilded ballroom. According to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-328206","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}