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http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mark-zuckerberg-plans-build-residential-compound-rejected-article-1.2796133

A Palo Alto Architectural Review Board voted that the Facebook founder’s plans to demolish four houses surrounding his palatial primary residence in order to rebuild them for other “residential functions” would tarnish the character of his upscale neighborhood.

The review board also said that Zuckerberg's plans to rebuild the homes with vastly different layouts would violate local zoning regulations.

“If these things were put on the market individually, you’d have a hard time selling, because some of them are very unusual,” board member Robert Gooyer said, according to the San Jose Mercury News. “In the context, if you take all four of them, they make sense.”

The billionaire tech mogul bought his 5,000-square-foot home in the swanky Silicon Valley neighborhood for $7 million in 2011. In 2013, Zuckerberg purchased the four peripheral homes to have more privacy because one of the houses had a view of his master bedroom. Together, the homes make up a 65,000-square-foot complex.

Zuckerberg had planned to bulldoze the houses and rebuild them as "smaller, updated versions," according to the filings with the city obtained by the Daily News. One of the homes would have had a 40-foot-by-30-foot main room and a service kitchen, making it a “great place for a party,” according to a description of the plans cited by Mercury News.

The proposed plans, rendered by San Francisco based firm Walker Warner Architects, stated an intention to "maintain the character of the neighborhood," but the local review board thought otherwise.

Board members were skeptical of the future market value of the unusually laid-out houses. "There's four homes," board member Peter Baltay said. "Are there four families living in these homes?"

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