Ballroom Bluff

[James48]

From Facebook just now-
From Andrew Kerr


Here's why the new White House ballroom project is not real. (The demo is obviously real.) Some background - I am a licensed Architect with 20+ years of experience. I have worked on multiple Federal projects with sensitive building programs that required background checks.

1. With a projected size of 90,000sf and a newly revised budget of $300M, the cost per square foot would be $3,333. No building costs anywhere near that. $1,000/sf is astronomical.

2. Let's assume, since we are drawing in the classical, style, that the proportions of the building adhere to the Golden Ratio. A 90,000sf would be a building with a footprint roughly 380' x 235'. Longer than a football field and 1.5x as wide.

2. The building is projected to accommodate 999 people. 15sf/person is required for a banquet area; 20sf/person is pretty comfortable. What you see in the rendering below is closer to 20sf/person. That's only 20,000sf, or a space that is 200'x100'. It's supposed to be a ballroom, so let's be extraordinarily generous and provide 10,000sf for the ballroom support functions, and another 10,000sf for pre-function. Extraordinarily generous. That's STILL only 40,000sf, not even half of the supposed building.

3. There are no drawings for the building. The renderings are poorly coordinated - exterior views do not match the interior views. See below - the White House is 70 feet tall, to the roof. The interior renderings show a room that is roughly 100' x 200', with a ~20 foot ceiling. The exterior renderings show a building footprint of 4.5x that amount.

Those are renderings that could be produced by young staff in a week or two, at most. Nothing else exists.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CTBZhfbxU/?mibextid=wwXIfr

There are NO PLANS, no details. Nothing.

[dweller]

1. Is just another grift

Like the $230 million he wants from the DOJ


✌🏻

[Ilsa]

2. Kick. This is interesting.

So if there is no construction to come, what will happen to the cleared space? Why tear it down, other than for psychological reasons and deceit?

[pat_k]

6. Sabotage. And distraction, knowing Epstein would loom large again with the release of Giuffre's posthumous memoir 10/21

I think the timing was 100% driven by the release of Virginia Giuffre's book. They started on 10/20 to make sure the demolition dominated the headlines for days, and perhaps even weeks.

But the act of destruction was always going to be in the mix. Only the timing was dictated by the need for a big distraction.

47 is hellbent on sabotage of everything that represents the values of global citizenship -- values like human-rights, rule of law, religious freedom, self-governance, and economic justice, and the thinking underlying those values, among them rationality, compassion as a moral imperative, and scientific inquiry.

He is destroying every lever of power we have to promote values of global citizenship at home and abroad. He and his regime are systematically destroying every mechanism by which the will of the American people is accurately measured and implemented. He is abusing the raw power of the American presidency to extort and coerce and to wreak havoc and exact vengeance on any person or nation he perceives as a competitor or opponent.

I suspect the whole notion of America as a beacon of hope -- a "shining city on a hill" -- turns his stomach. And the White House is a powerful symbol of that "shining city." Of course destroying it is in the mix. It is the symbol of that which he hates.

I don't know what psychology is driving this (beyond being a malignant narcissistic psychopath), but I think it has to do with the NY-DC corridor powerbrokers who never really invited him in -- with many of them ridiculing him as trashy, greedy, and uncouth. Perhaps many of those who rejected him embraced the values of global citizenship, and thus those values became the object of his hatred.

Who the fuck knows.

All I know is that destroying the physical structure of the White House seems completely consistent with all his other sabotage.

[maveric]

3. Permits?

Will they even use them?

[Skittles]

4. so it's like their replacement for ACA

"the concept of a plan"

but in the meantime, let's wreck it

[Wifes husband]

5. Who knows?

There is no telling how big this boondoggle will be. He is pulling all of this out of his ass.

[Martin Eden]

7. DENY Construction

Sieze the construction funds to rebuild the East Wing.

[Danascot]

8. Valuable analysis and insight

by architect Andrew Kerr (on Facebook).