Trump's changing White House ballroom plans fuel viral conspiracy theories

I 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. When 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

Many 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

The 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 The White House admits plans have changed and Press Secretary Caroline Levitt defended the president decision Can 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. The White House renovations are privately funded

and officials released a list of donors that are footing the bill for the project

But as costs rise and designs keep shifting, experts have been weighing in too. This discussion on social media only spiked after architect Andrew

Kerr posted a Facebook ysis questioning the project's numbers. He 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. Kerr also noted that a ballroom for about 1,000

guests would typically ne to 40,000 square feet, n allowing for pre-function

suggests the math just d Ward a journalist who and design also says that kind of cost is way out of line for a ballroom But to blow you know a square foot you know that like a hospital building

with a lot of expensive equipment and special infrastructure. That's a big university campus building

But 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. The East Wing, which was just demolished

sits above the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, a bunker built during World War II

It was built because of a nuclear threat. At 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. He denied their request

but after the attack of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Roosevelt immediately began building a bomb shelter

It's the same location where President George W. Bush and his team met following the 9-11 attacks

Because of that existing underground space some online are convinced it being expanded into a private data center that be used to police Americans all disguised beneath the new ballroom But a tech expert says that

theory doesn't hold up. I 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. Bentley Hensel is a senior data and dev

ops engineer. He posted that data centers can't operate underground because they generate too much

heat and require massive cooling systems. The 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

equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people

President Trump has said his renovation is no different from changes made by other presidents

But as with anything political these days, a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll

found that only 28 percent of Americans support the Ballroom Project. For more on this story and more, head over to our website or download our mobile app

I'm Kennedy Felton with Straight Arrow News