When Donald Trump came to Rancho Palos Verdes six years ago with plans for a world-class golf course, he was welcomed with open arms. Then came the dispute with the city over his plan to name a street after himself. And then came the battle with neighbors over his 12-foot-tall ficus trees.
Now the mogul is suing the small town, and suing big. He wants $100 million from a city with an annual budget just shy of $20 million.
In a lawsuit filed this week, Trump accused the city of fraud and civil rights violations, contending that the city was refusing to allow improvements needed to maintain the "Trump image," including a clubhouse terrace and a row of ficus trees he was forced to cut down earlier.
"I've been looking forward for a long time to do this," Trump said of the lawsuit Friday in a phone interview from New York. "The town does everything possible to stymie everything I do."
But city leaders and some residents said the lawsuit was just another attempt by the real estate mogul to bully the community and avoid playing by the rules. They call it the culmination of his history of run-ins with officials from the upscale, picturesque city of nearly 46,000 set amid the coves and beaches of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
The city's mayor, Larry Clark, dismissed the charges and said the lawsuit may cause residents' already simmering ill will toward the developer to explode.
"We have bent over backwards many, many times to work with Donald Trump," said Clark, who said he had spoken with Trump about the lawsuit. "I'm sure this lawsuit is really going to anger a lot of the residents."
Among the angered citizens is 68-year-old Jo Ann Michetti, who e-mailed a city councilman Friday urging him to "please continue not to give in to this bully."
"I think he just feels rules aren't made for him," said Michetti, a retired liability investigator who has lived in the city since 1971. "He expects them to say he can do it because he's Donald Trump."
Trump's relationship with residents did not start off this way. When the New York-based developer first swept up the 300-acre site, many thought the planned golf course would be a financial boon for a city economy just staggering out of a recession.
A landslide in 1999 had caused part of the property to collapse into the Pacific Ocean, driving the previous owners into bankruptcy. Trump snagged the land for a deeply discounted $27 million, in his first West Coast real estate venture.
