The Trump White House has quietly greenlit a fresh renovation of the historic Harry S. Truman Bowling Alley, wading into a project so politically toxic it once got canceled within 90 minutes of a single news story breaking.
The General Services Administration (GSA) awarded a nearly $253,000 contract on July 28 for lighting work on the two-lane bowling alley in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, according to public contract records reviewed by Politico's West Wing Playbook.
A separate August 18 contract added $8,800 for escort services to shepherd outside workers through secure White House areas. The same contractor, Charles Mann Enterprises — a Washington firm founded by former NFL Pro Bowler Charles Mann — also landed a much larger $878,000 contract that same day for an unspecified "EEOB basement studio project," in the same basement where the bowling alley sits.
History suggests this kind of project rarely stays quiet for long.
In 2014, the Obama administration proposed a full rebuild of the same lanes after GSA deemed them "irreparable" — only for the entire plan to collapse within an hour and a half of Time magazine breaking the story, amid fierce Republican backlash. Then-RNC Chair Reince Priebus mocked the project publicly, and the GOP-controlled House even passed an amendment specifically banning funds for bowling alley renovations; then-Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA) compared the upgrade to an indulgence like buying ice cream.
The alley itself has a long, bipartisan history of touch-ups.
It was first built in 1947 for Harry Truman's birthday and funded by Missourians, then relocated under Dwight Eisenhower in 1955, renovated under Bill Clinton in 1994, and fully restored during Trump's first term under first lady Melania Trump, that time paid for by the Bowling Proprietors' Association of America rather than taxpayers.
Trump's efforts to upgrade and renovate property around D.C. have drawn intense controversy from the public, with one of the most fraught projects being his creation of a ballroom in place of the East Wing. The Supreme Court cleared away major legal hurdles to proceed with that project on Monday.