Leah Fieger: Zoey, I am crazy about this story. Before you continue, I think it’s really important to say that Caroline, the lovely reporter for this story on your business desk, obtained 1,665 pages of documents about the Zuckerberg home controversy. This story is now canon.
Zoe Schiffer: Caroline Haskins is an absolute star. Our fact-checking team literally cried when I asked them. They were like, “Wait, sorry, how many documents are we looking at?” I was like, “Yeah.”
Leah Fieger: Thanks to the WIRED research team.
Zoe Schiffer: Absolutely. I guess we’ll just have to say that the school is named after one of the Zuckerberg family’s chickens. It is called Beacon Benn School.
Leah Fieger: I mean, hearing you say it, I know you’re serious, but again.
Zoe Schiffer: So, the Crescent City neighborhood in Palo Alto, where Zuckerberg lives, has, as you can imagine, some of the best real estate in the entire country. It’s full of these gorgeous houses, a lot of greenery. Mark Zuckerberg has been expanding his presence in this ultra-fancy neighborhood for years. The piece of land on which Zuckerberg lives has now expanded to include 11 separate properties. This is so ridiculous and a nightmare. If you’re living down the street, you owe everything you paid for your house, $5 million, and suddenly all your neighbors are Mark Zuckerbergs.
Leah Fieger: It is important to note that not all of them are even connecting. I don’t fully understand what this means. Do they walk across a neighbor’s porch to get to their horse’s pool? what does that involve?
Zoe Schiffer: We have more questions. We have to find it on Google Earth. I think there are some holes in this story that we need to fill. The expansion first became a matter of concern to Mark Zuckerberg’s neighbors in 2016, due to fears that his purchases were overinflating the market too dramatically. But then, about five years later, neighbors began to notice that a school was operating out of the Zuckerberg campus. Therefore, it is illegal to do so without a permit, at least under the area’s residential zoning code. And so, naturally, neighbors started alerting the city. As you said, Caroline Haskins, the reporter on the story, obtained over a thousand documents outlining the resulting battle between neighbors and city officials, basically arguing that, they felt like Zuckerberg was getting special treatment.