President Donald Trump confirmed his presidential library will be more like a high-rise hotel, and it will be built on a parcel of prime downtown Miami real estate finagled from a college that primarily serves minorities.
The 79-year-old president shared AI-generated video of his planned presidential library Monday on social media, but he told reporters in the Oval Office the following day that the project will closely resemble the self-branded hotels he developed as a private businessman – but he used his political powers to purchase the valuable property for next to nothing, as reported by NPR and WTVJ-TV.
"I don't believe in building libraries or museums," Trump told reporters. "Could be [an] office, but it's most likely going to be a hotel with a beautiful building underneath and a 747 Air Force One in the lobby."
The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund, Inc., owns the 2.6-acre plot at 531 NE 2 Ave. – across from two museums, the Kaseya Center, Bayside Marketplace and PortMiami – after the District Board of Trustees of Miami-Dade College transferred the land in late September to a state board overseen by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The college, which enrolls more minority students than any college or university in the U.S., had been using the land – valued at $67 million – as an employee parking lot, and local activists filed a lawsuit in early October accused Miami-Dade College of violating Florida's Sunshine Laws by failing to properly notify residents of what the board would be voting on.
A local judge agreed and temporarily blocked the transfer of the land and scheduled a trial for August 2026, and a state appeals court declined to block the legal challenge, but the college trustees held another vote in December that was more publicized, and nearly 100 people voiced their opposition at the meeting.
However, the board of trustees voted unanimously to transfer the valuable real estate to Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund of the State of Florida, and a month after that vote Miami-Dade College President Madeline Pumariega turned over the property to that board overseen by DeSantis, the state gave up the land in a quitclaim deed in February to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, Inc.
Court records show the state transferred the property previously owned by the college to the presidential library for $10.
The nonprofit Trump library fund was set up December 2024 after ABC News agreed to donate $15 million as part of its defamation lawsuit, and tech giants and other companies pumped it full of cash as part of other legal settlements with Trump, but the fund was dissolved by the state in September 2025 – days before the trustees' first voted on the land transfer – after it failed to file required annual reporting.
It's not clear how much money was in the fund at the time, but Democratic lawmakers say it could have held up to $63 million.
The only stipulation on the quitclaim deed, as the Miami Heraldreported, is that "construction starts on a 'Presidential library, museum, and/or center within five years.'"