What is Mark Zuckerberg hiding on his 700 acres in Hawaii
Pilaʻa, Kauai — Last Sunday morning, more than a dozen cars were parked along a six-foot wall built around Mark Zuckerberg’s vast retreat on the northeast corner of Kauai, a small, remote Hawaiian island that’s home to 70,000 people. The gate, which is almost always locked shut, was open, so you could walk right past the Facebook-blue sign that reads “PRIVATE PROPERTY Thank you for not trespassing.” The lava rock wall, which Zuckerberg started building in 2016, inflamed some of his neighbors. It’s built on a bluff a mile from the ocean and now stretches for nearly a mile along Zuckerberg’s property, making it impossible to see the water from the road.
Screenshot: Google Maps
Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan acquired more than 700-acres on Kauai in 2014 by purchasing two adjacent beachside properties reportedly for more than $100 million. Last year, he purchased another 89-acres for $45.3 million. His property extends a mile inland over a former sugarcane plantation. Multiple streams flow across the land to the ocean, carving out forested valleys through rolling pastures grazed by cattle.
While the Facebook CEO likely hoped this corner of Kauai would be his private oasis, his property is peppered with more than a dozen smaller parcels of what are called Kuleana lands—land that was awarded during the 1850s and has been passed down for generations by local families. For the last several years, these lands Zuckerberg doesn’t own have been the source of simmering conflict with the community, as he has taken aggressive steps to buy or otherwise control a part of Kauai.
In the latest development in the ongoing saga, we were let inside Zuckerberg’s gates for an open house of sorts for four of these properties, which as a result of an arcane measure called a quiet title action will be auctioned on the front steps of Kauai’s Fifth Circuit Court Building on March 22.
The crowd waiting to tour the property included a mix of Hawaiians, Kauai residents, lawyers, journalists, and Zuckerberg employees. Many people seemed to already know each other. Some exchanged a hug and kiss on the cheek, as customary in Hawaii.
In theory, the people that showed up were all there to decide if they want to bid, but really, many came for the rare opportunity to glimpse inside the compound of one of the richest people the world. The whole act of building a giant wall invites intrigue and suspicion.
“I’m just curious to see what it looks like, and I’m curious what he’s doing with it because I’ve heard a lot of different things,” said Steph Klockenbrink, a 24-year-old who runs an organic farm on the same street as Zuckerberg’s property.
“It’s locked down a lot of the time, so just having the opportunity to see it is cool,” said Matthew James, a 28-year-old landscaper. “The fact that it seems hush-hush and no one really knows what’s going on kinda raises a red flag.”
It was hardly only curious observers, though. The controversy over the lands has prompted outrage, and some people were there to register their grievance and do research. Kaiulani Mahuka, who hosts a radio show on Kauai Community Radio about Hawaiian sovereignty, told me she was at the open house as a “Kanaka Maoli,” meaning Hawaiian, and said it was “a war crime to sell these lands.”
“The lands were deeded in perpetuity, and that means forever,” said Mahuka. “Kuleana, you don’t own it—your family belongs to it.”
Kuleana is a Hawaiian value that translates to responsibility and refers to the reciprocal relationship people have with the land to care for it. The land, in turn, has a kuleana to provide and care for its stewards. In the 1850s, the Hawaiian Kingdom allocated the Kuleana lands, which were intended to go to Hawaiians who already lived on and worked the land. Before this, Native Hawaiians did not conceive of land ownership but instead shared land communally. The Kuleana lands were meant to be passed down to descendants of the grantees forever.
https://gizmodo.com/a-trip-inside-mark-zuckerberg-s-sprawling-embattled-co-1833142966