LONDON (AFP) — Plans by US tycoon Donald Trump for a controversial luxury golf resort in Scotland were thrown out Thursday by local councillors, a spokesman said.
In a knife-edge vote, Aberdeenshire Council's infrastructure services committee ruled against the planning application for Trump International Golf Links Scotland.
Trump said he was "surprised" by the decision, and added he was considering appealing, but noted that he had other options in Britain.
"It would have been a great development," Trump said in a statement.
"We are considering an appeal, and also considering doing something very spectacular in another location.
"Sadly it will not be in Scotland."
The businessman's team can now appeal to Scottish ministers if they wished.
The new vote -- which was tied seven votes to seven, before being decided by the committee chairman -- overturned a vote by a lower committee earlier this month which approved the project.
It followed a heated two-and-a-half-hour debate in the council's Aberdeen headquarters, with one councillor describing the project as "an improvement to what, to me, is wasteland" while another insisted the council should play "hardball" with Trump.
The row has echoes of the 1983 cult film "Local Hero", in which an astronomy-obsessed US oil tycoon earmarks a picturesque Scottish fishing village as the site of a new oil and gas development.
Trump has pledged the one-billion-pound (two-billion-dollar, 1.4-billion-euro) development at Balmedie, just north of Aberdeen on the Scottish east coast, would be the "greatest golf course in the world."
The planned 1,400-acre (570-hectare) resort includes two championship golf courses, an eight-storey five-star hotel, a golf academy, nearly 1,000 holiday homes and 500 private houses.
But the project has courted controversy and Trump has battled local salmon fisherman Michael Forbes, who has refused to sell up.
His ramshackle 25-acre (10 hectare) farm lies right in the middle of the proposed second hole and hotel site.
Part of the complex would be built on a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest. Some environmentalists fear the resort could destroy rare plant species and delicate sand dune systems.
Trump aide George Sorial, who was in Aberdeen for the decision, argued that the decision was bad news for the region's economy.
"It is our position that the council has failed to adequately represent the voice and opinion of the people of Aberdeen and the shire who are ultimately the losers here."
He added: "I think it sends out a devastating message that if you want to do big business, don't do it in the north-east of Scotland."
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