The Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, California, has some of the best real estate in the country, with a charming hodgepodge of homes ranging in style from Tudor revival to modern farmhouse and contemporary Mediterranean. It also has a gigantic compound that is home to Mark Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan, and their daughters Maxima, August, and Aurelia. Their land has expanded to include 11 previously separate properties, five of which are connected by at least one property line.
The Zuckerberg compound’s expansion first became a concern for Crescent Park neighbors as early as 2016, due to fears that his purchases were driving up the market. Then, about five years later, neighbors noticed that a school appeared to be operating out of the Zuckerberg compound. This would be illegal under the area’s residential zoning code without a permit. They began a crusade to shut it down that did not end until summer 2025.
WIRED obtained 1,665 pages of documents about the neighborhood dispute—including 311 records, legal filings, construction plans, and emails—through a public record request filed to the Palo Alto Department of Planning and Development Services. (Mentions of “Zuckerberg” or “the Zuckerbergs” appear to have been redacted. However, neighbors and separate public records confirm that the property in question belongs to the family. The names of the neighbors who were in touch with the city were also redacted.)
Nothing says “functioning democracy” like “compound.”
Go for “compounds” if we ever Purge, got it.
Nichol doesn’t quite get it.
Billionaires annoying millionaires is something that doesn’t bother me much.
The millionaires are closer in wealth to us than they are to the billionaires probably
Not even probably, you’re 100% correct. Forbes has Zuck’s net worth at $213b.
If you lined up people with a net worth of $1m, you would need 213,000 people to equal what Zuck has. Or roughly 3x the population of Palo Alto - if every single resident was a millionaire.
Being a millionaire doesn’t mean a whole lot these days with current housing prices. Sure, it’s a dream for most people to have at least that much net worth (myself included), but with how much housing costs these days, you can have a million in assets buying your first home with a 30y fixed rate mortgage and letting it appreciate over those 30y (and turning that from debt into net value).
Regardless, the kind of people living around Zucc aren’t the kind of people I’m talking about here. I don’t care a whole lot about their woes either, to be honest.
