Mark Zuckerberg is neither quiet nor discreet. The man behind Facebook and CEO of Meta has been steadily buying up properties that merged into a mega mansion Palo Alto’s Crescent Park along with wife Priscilla Chan, and is now container to over eleven houses on Edgewood Drive and Hamilton Avenue, just a short walk from Stanford University.
After more than seven years in renovations, zero portions of the road are leafy in sight. Neighbors say say they’ve endured blocked driveways, constant trucks, and a soundtrack of hammering. One of the solutions was the “Zuckerberg peace offer.” Zuckerberg reportedly handed out noise-canceling headphones to all of the neighbors to help with the inconvenient. however, we do not, I repeat, do not care about that in a relation to the bat fantasy. Undoubtedly, people are only attempting to draw the cousin of the over head and a hair. It is zero of a bit missable. The homes are guesthouses, flawless gardens, coiffed with a hydrofloor, and ready batpour. Construction and zest.
Despite spending more than $110 million, some of the homes sit empty. Others have been converted into guesthouses, manicured gardens, a pickleball court, and even a pool with a disappearing hydrofloor. Beneath the surface, a sprawling 7,000-square-foot basement has locals joking about a “billionaire’s bat cave.”
Neighbors aren’t buying it
Formerly to be the home to lawyers, professors, and executives, the community has been referred to by its inhabitants as having been turned into a high-security fortress. Private security guards patrol the area while surveillance cameras gaze into neighboring yards. In 2016, the City Council of Palo Alto did turn down one of Zuckerberg’s more ambitious ideas, which was to demolish a few houses and replace them with a more refined compound.
Over the years, however, without the loud proclamations of the more reserved triumphs of the plan, the majority of them have been achieved. Critics point fingers at him for having bypassed the zoning regulations and the enforcement authorities having had a blind eye. Zuckerberg’s spokesman, countered with the point that him and his wife worked with the aim of minimizing the disruptions and intended to integrate into the area.
In the eyes of few of the community’s longtime inhabitants, such statements seem empty when considering that the area is completely dominated by disruptions, heavy traffic, and a fence.
Real estate reach: from hawaii to washington
It goes without saying, that the property empire of Zuckerberg does not stop at Palo Alto. There is also his much reported estate which is 2300 acres large, located in Kauai, Hawaii, where locals have pushed back against his land acquisitions. There have also been reports that claim the existence of a large underground building on the land that Zuckerberg has dismissed saying that is “not a doomsday bunker”.
Closer to home, he’s also purchased luxury properties at Lake Tahoe and a mansion in Washington, D.C. Each new acquisition continues to fuel the same discussion: what happens when the world’s richest start to turn entire neighborhoods into their personal compounds?
The price of being neighbors with Zuckerberg
It definitely is a high price. In crescent park, the hidden costs are not just the real estate values, they are the sounds, the traffic, and the idea that the neighborhood has been molded to fit the desires of one man. For many long time residents, the place they chose for its quiet charm has turned into a place that has been overshadowed by Silicon Valley’s most famous CEO.
And the question still remains for the people on Edgewood Drive and on Hamilton Avenue: Will the billionaire next door actually feel like a neighbor?