The New York Times reports:

For decades, the Crescent Park neighborhood of Palo Alto represented the dream of California living.

Doctors, lawyers, business executives and Stanford University professors lived in charming homes under oak, redwood and magnolia trees. The houses, an eclectic mix including Craftsman homes and bungalows, were filled with families who became fast friends. The annual block parties heaved with people. Daily life was tranquil, and the soundtrack was one of children laughing as they rode their bicycles and played in one another’s gardens.

Then Mark Zuckerberg moved in.

Since his arrival 14 years ago, Crescent Park’s neighborhood tranquillity and even many of its actual neighbors have vanished. Residents hardly ever see the Facebook founder, now worth about $270 billion, but they feel his presence every day.

Mr. Zuckerberg has used Edgewood Drive and Hamilton Avenue like a Monopoly game board, spending more than $110 million to scoop up at least 11 houses. He has offered owners as much as $14.5 million, double or even triple what the homes are worth, and neighbors have seen one family after another leave.

Mr. Zuckerberg has laid claim to the neighborhood as tech billionaires have made headlines for increasingly brazen shows of their wealth. Jeff Bezos launched his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, and other women into space on a Blue Origin flight before taking over Venice for the couple’s wedding. Elon Musk has created a compound in Texas for his numerous children and their mothers, and Marc Benioff has been buying up a wide swath of the Big Island of Hawaii.

But few know firsthand the decade-long disruption, noise, surveillance and uncertainty one extremely rich person can create better than the neighbors in Crescent Park.

“No neighborhood wants to be occupied,” said Michael Kieschnick, whose home on Hamilton Avenue is bound on three sides by property owned by Mr. Zuckerberg. “But that’s exactly what they’ve done. They’ve occupied our neighborhood.” [Continue reading…]