Contractors are redoing weeks of construction work on President Donald Trump’s White House helipad after he reportedly took issue with its appearance and its slope, which he wants to be more level.
The changes, first reported by The Washington Post, are already underway. Photos taken by The Associated Press show contractors removing parts of the 100-foot-wide presidential seal, made of granite, that had already been installed.
The president pushed for the helipad, which is estimated to cost up to $6 million, after a new, more powerful fleet of Marine One helicopters damaged the grass. The project adds to his growing list of renovation projects at the White House and across the nation’s capital.
Construction for the helipad began in June, and Trump has reportedly sped up the installation ahead of an “upcoming state visit,” adding $875,000 to the cost of the project, according to The Washington Post. Documents obtained by the newspaper do not name the foreign leader in question, but officials involved in the construction project requested to expedite the process days after Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House on Sept. 24.
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“For years, the White House has desperately needed a proper Helipad on White House grounds that will allow the President to land safely and also protect the beautiful South Lawn grass from the fierce exhaust fumes of the incredible Marine One,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told NOUTS in a statement Tuesday.
It’s unclear if the issues were prompted by safety concerns or aesthetics. In an article about the landscape of the South Lawn, the National Park Service described the incline as a “gradual” slope, and Marine One aircraft have landed on the area for decades without major issue. Federal aviation law does not require helipads to be perfectly level to allow for water runoff.
Trump told reporters earlier this month that Lockheed Martin, which owns the helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky, will cover the “about $5 or $6 million” cost of construction because they felt bad about the damage caused by their aircraft.
When reached by NOTUS, Lockheed Martin would not say whether it intended to pay for the additional construction. It remains unclear how the construction revision will impact the budget for the project. Clark Construction, the company working on the installation, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The addition of a White House helipad has been under discussion for years, according to a May report from The Washington Post. Trump has experience planning and building helipads — the Palm Beach Town Council approved the construction of a new helipad at his Mar-a-Lago Club in October, after the president’s first helipad was demolished in 2021 at the end of his first term.
“The hardest thing to get is a helipad,” Trump said Monday. “There’s no harder zoning thing to get, and I had like seven of them.”
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