00:00I just finished construction on a venue in Atlanta, and the capacity of that venue is about 2,500, 1,500 seated, so it's bigger. It's bigger than the ballroom he's talking about. We did it for about just under 1.5 million. $200 million is insane.
00:17When plans for a White House ballroom were announced in July, reactions were mixed, but as those plans and price tags keep changing, people online are sharing theories about what they think is really going on.
00:31Many have called out the ballroom's inconsistencies. The New York Times noted major changes between July and October, including floor plans, window placement, and an estimated cost that has tripled from $100 million to $300 million.
00:50The number of arched windows has also shifted. A new portico replaces the longtime East Wing entrance used by tour groups, and overall, the Times reports that no one seems to know what the final design will really look like.
01:05The White House admits plans have changed, and Press Secretary Caroline Levitt defended the president's decision.
01:11Can any president do such a thing to the White House grounds? There have been many presidents in the past who have made their mark on this beautiful White House complex.
01:21The White House renovations are privately funded, and officials released a list of donors that are footing the bill for the project.
01:28But as costs rise and designs keep shifting, experts have been weighing in, too.
01:33This discussion on social media only spiked after architect Andrew Kerr posted a Facebook analysis questioning the project's numbers.
01:41He pointed out that at 90,000 square feet and a cost of $300 million, the project would cost about $3,333 per square foot, far above even the most luxurious construction.
01:56Kerr also noted that a ballroom for about 1,000 guests would typically need only 20,000 to 40,000 square feet, not 90,000, even allowing for pre-function areas.
02:07He suggests the math just doesn't add up.
02:10Jacob Ward, a journalist who's covered architecture and design, also says that kind of cost is way out of line for a ballroom.
02:18But to blow, you know, $3,000 a square foot, you know, that's like a hospital building with a lot of expensive equipment and special infrastructure.
02:29That's a big university campus building.
02:33But perhaps the most viral theory came from a now-deleted video claiming the project's real purpose isn't a ballroom at all, but a private underground data center.
02:43The East Wing, which was just demolished, sits above the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a bunker built during World War II.
02:51It was built because of a nuclear threat.
02:53At that time, the Office of Civilian Defense deemed the White House an unsafe building in the event of a deadly fire and urged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to move somewhere else.
03:03He denied their request, but after the attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Roosevelt immediately began building a bomb shelter.
03:12It's the same location where President George W. Bush and his team met following the 9-11 attacks.
03:17Because of that existing underground space, some online are convinced it's being expanded into a private data center that'll be used to police Americans, all disguised beneath the new ballroom.
03:29But a tech expert says that theory doesn't hold up.
03:33I have a 48-inch tall rack of computers in my basement that produce so much heat, I heat part of my house with them in the winter.
03:41Bentley Hensel is a senior data and DevOps engineer.
03:44He posted that data centers can't operate underground because they generate too much heat and require massive cooling systems.
03:52The Environmental and Energy Study Institute reports large data centers can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day to cool down their servers,
04:01equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people.
04:06President Trump has said his renovation is no different from changes made by other presidents.
04:11But as with anything political these days, a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that only 28% of Americans support the Ballroom Project.
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