For this special Labor Day edition of the Attention-Whore Index, we take a break from all those (mostly) human spotlight-seekers to focus on real estate. Not just real-estate scandals but all manner of peculiar, appalling, grandiose, attention-grabbing real-estate … ventures, we’ll call them.
But first, let’s acknowledge last week’s A.W.I.-poll toppers.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might not be winning the presidency in November, thanks to the Democrats, the media, and everyone else who conspired against him (you know who you are), but at least he’ll always have the Attention-Whore Index. That, Kennedy won in a landslide, with 43.4 percent of your votes, followed by his new partner in the brotherhood of the aggrieved, Donald Trump (19.4 percent), the Democrats with their low-key convention (13.6 percent), A.W.I. mainstay Elon Musk (11.8 percent), and the rest. If Kennedy can continue to locate that sweet spot where arrogance, entitlement, and bizarreness meet, he might well be popping up here again as he toadies for Trump. Especially if stories about him decapitating dead whales on Massachusetts seashores keep resurfacing.
And now, back to the land.
The nominees in this week’s special edition of the Property-Whore Index Poll are …
1.
MARC ROWAN
The billionaire investor (Apollo Global Management) has been battling the town of East Hampton over Duryea’s Lobster Deck since 2014. Rowan bought the low-key, family-run seafood shack, a Montauk institution since the 1930s, and soon applied to raze the site and build a 350-seat restaurant. (He withdrew the proposal following a local uproar.) But town officials contend that he’s violated the sale agreement by expanding the original Duryea’s and turning it into a proper restaurant, complete with overwhelming crowds, traffic congestion, and table service (none of which it previously had). Rowan has sued East Hampton five times. East Hampton has asked a judge to find Rowan in contempt of court. Etc.
2.
BILL GROSS
In Laguna Beach, California, the billionaire bond investor (PIMCO) was involved in a years-long feud with his neighbor, tech entrepreneur Mark Towfiq. In 2019, Gross and his wife, the former tennis pro Amy Schwartz (10,000-square-foot estate, $35.8 million), covered their million-dollar Dale Chihuly outdoor sculpture with netting to protect it from the elements, prompting Towfiq and his wife, Carol Nakahara (9,500-square-foot home, $25.8 million), to complain that the netting blocked their view of the ocean. According to Towfiq and Nakahara, Gross and Schwartz retaliated with regular blasts of hip-hop and—here’s where it gets ugly—the Gilligan’s Island theme song. While acknowledging an affection for the Gilligan’s theme, they denied playing it loudly or repeatedly, and accused Towfiq and Nakahara of aiming cameras at their property. Only in 2022 did the hostilities officially come to an end: Gross and Schwartz were allowed to keep the netting (they later took it down), as well as the sculpture (though it was moved), but they had to stop the music, and additionally the couple was sentenced to five days in jail (suspended, two days of community service). In short, a good time was had by all.
3.
JARED KUSHNER
Donald Trump’s charmless son-in-law’s proposed luxury resort on Albania’s unspoiled Mediterranean coastline has alarmed environmentalists—endangered species, fragile eco-systems, and, by the way, we’re going to need an international airport nearby—but Kushner insists it would all be “very sustainable.” Uh-huh. It would be Kushner’s biggest project using his $3 billion private-equity fund, which two years ago received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Washington Post notes that this is “at least the second time Kushner has partnered with governments in the Balkans friendly to the former president, with the assistance of at least one former Trump administration official with deep ties to those nations’ leaders”—Richard Grenell, Trump’s envoy to the Balkans, who now works for Kushner—“a business practice that many Democrats and other critics say is a conflict of interest.” There’s just no pleasing the cabana-hostile.
4.
MATTHEW PRINCE
The billionaire founder of the cyber-security company Cloudfare, in his effort to build an 11,300-square-foot mansion in Park City, Utah, has resorted to “tactics includ[ing] hiring lobbyists to sneak an amendment to an affordable housing bill in the Utah legislature to override local planning rules,” reported the Daily Mail in May. Prince also bought the local paper, the Park Record, and sued the couple in the $11.5 million mansion next door after they complained about the proposed project, “claiming their dogs, Sasha and Mocha, were vicious.” Some locals supported the neighbors with Free Sasha & Mocha stickers, and one went on the record describing them as “big, fluffy and beautiful” (the dogs, that is, not the neighbors). Nevertheless, this month the Park City Planning Department signed off on the Prince construction—although, as a notably evenhanded article in the Park Record reported, the decision can be appealed.
5.
KEN GRIFFIN
The hedge-fund manager (Citadel; net worth: $38 billion) is building what could end up being the most expensive private home on the planet in Palm Beach, Florida. Griffin started buying up beachfront property a quarter-mile down South Ocean Boulevard from Fortress Mar-a-Lago a decade ago, and when he reached 27 acres, he “obliterated the existing homes,” the New York Post reported in 2023, “with intentions to spend between a staggering $150 to $400 million on constructing a mega-estate that will be worth an estimated $1 billion upon completion.” With sea levels projected to rise 10 to 12 inches in the next 10 years, it’s no wonder that Griffin has contributed toward Miami-Dade County’s efforts to solve housing shortages and climate change—$3 million, or very close to 0.08 percent of his net worth.
6.
JIM RATCLIFFE
Sir Jim—beekeeper, owner of the global chemical company INEOS, part owner of the Manchester United soccer team, and Britain’s second-richest man—prevailed after an 18-month battle with a neighbor who’d complained that Ratcliffe’s retroactive request for permission to build two already-constructed barns and a tennis court on his seven-acre, $8 million property would turn coastal Hampshire into “an industrial site.” Ratcliffe argued successfully that the barns were needed to store equipment for his apiary—the tennis court was needed, presumably, so the bees had someplace to work out—and that he had indeed “commenced beekeeping at the site and has established a number of beehives in order to supply himself and his family with honey.” In other words: buzz off.
7.
RON DESANTIS
Kind of a ringer in this crowd—he’s only a millionaire. But DeSantis used his power as governor of Florida last week to announce a “Great Outdoors Initiative” that would “build hotels, golf courses, pickleball courts and other ‘amenities’ at state parks prized for their pristine habitats,” The Washington Post reported. The proposal called for “building three golf courses at Jonathan Dickinson State Park, a stretch of undeveloped land north of Palm Beach popular for its trails and birding.” (The three golf courses would spread across 500 acres. Florida already has 1,250 golf courses, more than any other state, and an increasing number of localities experiencing water shortages.) But not so fast! After the plan drew bipartisan opposition, DeSantis backpedaled (“I never saw that”) at a news conference, calling the proposal “half-baked,” something that had been “intentionally leaked out to a left-wing group to try to create a narrative.” Turns out (he said, creating a narrative) he’s actually been a great governor when it comes to conservation.
8.
JUSTIN ISHBIA
All Ishbia, a private-equity mogul (net worth: $6 billion) and a co-owner of the Phoenix Suns, wanted was a $44 million, 68,000-square-foot mansion on Lake Michigan. Was that too much to ask? Apparently. He’d bought four adjacent parcels of land to accommodate the family home, in the process razing three houses that had been there—also some bluffs—as part of a perfectly legal land swap (a private individual buying up public land ideally to the benefit of both). But when the quietly wealthy town of Winnetka, Illinois, which had approved the swap, saw a good chunk of beachfront turned into a construction site, it tightened the regulations, presumably with an eye to possible future Ishbias. As New York magazine put it, “Most land-swap opponents are rural, blue-collar, and voiceless. But in Winnetka, the opponents had pull.”
9.
Ty Warner
The owner since 2000 (purchase price: $150 million) of the Biltmore Santa Barbara hotel, near Montecito, California, who is known as the “Beanie Babies billionaire” because of the stuffed-toy company he founded, is getting pushback over plans for the hotel’s post-pandemic reopening. Warner wants to add a circular pool to the 1927 Spanish Colonial Revival landmark, but the chair of the Montecito Board of Architectural Review sniffed that the pool proposal was in fact a “lazy river” and a “splashy, nouveau riche-type element,” according to The Times of London, and the board rejected the plan. (In the film The Beanie Bubble, by the way, Warner was played by Zach Galifianakis, but as the newspaper notes, he “was upset with his portrayal in the film and said he would have liked to have been played by Daniel Day-Lewis or Warren Beatty.”) The Biltmore plans to appeal. The Sussexes are not involved.
10.
PATRICE PASTOR
A Monégasque property developer, Pastor was already known as “the octopus” for his acquisitive habits back home in Monaco, and has been buying properties in Carmel, California, for years—to the increasing consternation of local residents. Pastor owns at least 15 Carmel properties worth around $124 million, but his most recent proposed project, a 13,428-square-foot mixed-use development, was rebuffed by the village. “You’ve shown no respect for the neighbor behind you,” the planning commissioner told him. “A wall that’s four feet away from the property line that completely eliminates not just the view but the sun and the air and the space—it’s disrespectful to your neighbors.” Quoi? Qu’est-ce que ça veux dire … “neighbors”? —George Kalogerakis
George Kalogerakis, a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL, worked at Spy, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. He is a co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and a co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War
