The Trump National Doral resort has laid off 560 workers because of a business drought from the tourism shutdown.
The multi-course golf resort and hotel closed March 23 under orders that also closed all Miami-Dade County hotels and motels because of the coronavirus crisis.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filed March 30 by Trump Miami Resorts Management LLC specifies that the layoffs include 123 servers, 43 housekeepers, and 25 cooks.
The notification said that from March 19 through April 2, the resort was forced to make temporary layoffs and furloughs.
"Based on the fluid and rapidly evolving nature of this situation ... at this time we are unable to provide a specific date at which we will be able to recommence regular Resort operations and return affected employees to work."
The March 27 notification letter to Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, Doral Mayor Juan Carlos Bermudez and Steven Gustafson of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity describes the workers as being in "temporary layoff or furlough status."
President Donald Trump bought the resort in February 2012 and ordered a redesign of the signature Blue Monster course between the 2013 and 2014 World Golf Championships-Cadillac Championship events, only to see the value of the property decline. The PGA moved the event from Doral after the 2016 tournament in response to then-candidate Trump's comments about Mexican immigrants.
In 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, tax records showed the property was collecting about $200 a night compared to $250 on average for competitors elsewhere in the Miami market. It also showed revenue having dropped from $92 million in 2015 to $75 million in 2017, an 18% decline for the first year of the Trump presidency.
Last year, despite property values rising across much of Miami-Dade, county appraisers assessed the Doral resort's value as having declined 2% year on year in 2019 due to declining sales. Total valuations for the 20 parcels within the Trump Doral hit $105.9 million, up less than 1% from the 2018 value of $105.7 million.
Trump had sought to host the G-7 last year, but shelved those plans after bipartisan backlash over a potential conflict of interest.
