‘He’s replacing the homes, not demolishing them.’
According to an application
filed with the city’s planning department, the homes that Zuckerberg
bought in 2012 and 2013 for more than $43 million along Hamilton Avenue
and Edgewood Drive in Palo Alto’s tony Crescent Park neighborhood would
be demolished. They’ll be replaced with smaller houses on the same lots
whose inhabitants won’t be able to see into the billionaire’s backyard.
Facebook
did not return e-mailed requests for comment. Miles Radcliffe-Trenner, a
spokesman for Sard Verbinnen & Co., in San Francisco, speaking on
behalf of the project, said Zuckerberg hasn’t decided what to do with
the homes once they are rebuilt. “He’s replacing the homes, not
demolishing them,” Radcliffe-Trenner said, adding that the owners of the
homes purchased by Zuckerberg have been out for more than a year.
“There’s nobody being kicked out of their homes, and they’re not being
rezoned for commercial use.”
Radcliffe-Trenner said that,
like other residential projects undertaken by city residents,
Zuckerberg’s plans must be approved by the city’s planning commission
and that there is no timeline yet for the razings and reconstructions of
the homes. “There’s no reason to think this will be particularly
controversial; however, [Zuckerberg’s] goal is to do the work all at
once so as to minimize the impact on his neighbors,” Radcliffe-Trenner
said.
Zuckerberg has been steadily buying his neighbors out after he learned of a developer’s plan to build a house
next to his that would have been tall enough to include views into his
yard — as well as to market it as neighboring the Facebook founder’s
residence.
Entities controlled by the Internet entrepreneur paid
$10.5 million in September 2013 for the 3,600-square-foot four-bedroom,
four-bathroom home at 1462 Edgewood Dr., which was built in 1949. The similarly sized property at 1459 Hamilton Ave.,
which was built in 1929, was bought in October 2013 for $14 million.
(The 3,800-square-foot home had previously been sold in May 1995 for
$1.2 million)
The four-bedroom, three-bathroom 2,600-square-foot property at 1451 Hamilton Ave.,
built in 1948, was bought for $14.5 million in October 2013, according
to Zillow.com. The three-bedroom, three-bath 3,200-square-foot home at 1457 Hamilton, which was built in 1953, was purchased by Zuckerberg in December 2012 for $4.8 million.
Zuckerberg,
who launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory in 2004 and now is
worth an estimated $52 billion, bought his current home, a 1903
five-bedroom, five-bathroom residence at 1456 Edgewood Dr., in March
2011 for $7 million. He lives there with his wife, 31-year-old
pediatrician Priscilla Chan and infant daughter Maxima.
A photo of Zuckerberg's house in Palo Alto from 2012.
Zuckerberg also owns a house
on Fair Oaks Street on Liberty Hill in San Francisco’s Mission
District, near Dolores Park, that’s been valued at $10 million.
The
median estimate for homes in the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo
Alto is $4.1 million, up 13% in the past year, and is expected to rise
another 3.2% in the next year, according to Zillow.com.
Overall,
homes in the city of Palo Alto, at the heart of Silicon Valley and home
to Stanford University, have a median home value of $2.5 million. Last
November, one Realtor listed a garage in the Barron Park neighborhood of
Palo Alto for nearly $2 million.
The
two multistory homes and two single-level homes near Zuckerberg’s would
be demolished and replaced with three single-story homes and one
two-story property, according the filing submitted to the city’s
Planning and Community Environment Department. “The plans will reduce
overall square footage relative to the existing homes and aim to ensure
the new structures and surrounding gardens blend seamlessly with the
neighborhood,” according to a May 16 letter from the property-management
company representing Zuckerberg’s interests to Crescent Park neighbors.
Earlier this month, Zuckerberg and Facebook found themselves under fire after a May 9 story from Gizmodo.com
accused the social-media site of suppressing news from conservative
sources in its “trending topics” stream. Zuckerberg, who lives in a ZIP
Code (94301) that donates two to one in favor of Democrats, said in a May 12 posting on Facebook that the site does not engage in “suppression of political perspectives.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-to-raze-four-homes-with-a-view-of-his-own-2016-05-24?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo
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