Zuckerberg To Demolish and Replace Four Palo Alto Houses .

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to tear down four houses around his Silicon Valley home and replace them with “smaller, updated versions,” records showed.

The 32-year-old tech mogul filed plans last week in Palo Alto, Calif., to build three new single-story homes and one two-story home in the Crescent Park neighbourhood, according to the city’s Planning and Community Environment Department.

Zuckerberg paid over $30 million for the four properties in 2013 after learning of a developer’s plan for a house next to Zuckerberg’s tall enough to get a view into his master bedroom, the San Jose Mercury News reported.


An overhead view of the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, Calif., shows Mark Zuckerberg's home and surrounding houses he plans to demolish and replace.
(KPIX-TV)
Zuckerberg, estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth more than $50 billion, bought his home around Edgewood Drive and Hamilton Ave. for $7 million two years earlier, according to real estate database Trulia.

A spokesman for the new project, Miles Radcliffe-Trenner of Sard Verbinnen & Co., directed the Daily News to the filings with the city and declined to discuss Zuckerberg’s plans for the site.

“The proposed project seeks to maintain the character of the neighborhood, replacing four single family homes in kind with smaller, updated versions,” the filing said. “The team is working closely with a local arborist to minimize impact from construction on the existing trees. Our goal is to ensure the homes and surrounding gardens blend seamlessly with the neighborhood and feel as if they have always been there.”

Three of the four homes would feature French doors and a “simple palette,” while the fourth would take on a “more unique character and material palette, in keeping with the variety of architectural styles evident in the surrounding neighborhood,” according to the plans. Designs for the two-story home call for white brick walls, steel doors and windows and a metal roof.


A rendering shows one of the four proposed new homes.
(WALKER WARNER ARCHITECTS)
The city will hold public hearings before any possible approval of the plans. The Crescent Park Neighborhood Association has yet to take a position on the application, and locals interviewed by KPIX-TV reacted with mixed reviews.

“Mark’s a valued member of the community and he should really be allowed to do whatever he wants,” said Scott Alexander, who lives two blocks away from Zuckerberg. “So the fact that he owns all four of those homes, I think he has every right to do what he wants with them.”


Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan pose with their baby daughter Max in an image shortly after she was born late last year.
(COURTESY OF MARK ZUCKERBERG/REUTERS)
Yet fellow Palo Alto resident Kate Luman told the TV station it’s not Zuckerberg’s decision to make alone.

“It should be up to the neighbors as well,” Luman said. “The people across the street probably bought the house because of what the neighborhood looked like, and now he’s just going to come in and change it? I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem right.”

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Written by Unknown on Sunday 29 May 2016