What do commodities trader John Paulson, real estate tycoon Harrison LeFrak, CNN morning news show co-anchor Christopher Cuomo, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower's granddaughter Anne Eisenhower have in common?
They share an opposition to the “Farrelization” of their neighborhood in historic Southampton Village, where Joe Farrell has proposed building a 5,531 square foot house on a 1.2 acre parcel on Hill Street according to an article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal.
Dubbed "King of McMansions," Farrell, who was profiled last summer in The New York Times is described as being “a local version of Donald Trump, without the history of debt, the lush hair or the insults.”
Mr. Paulson, Mr. LeFrak, Mr. Cuomo, and Ms. Eisenhower are just a few of the 85 names who penned letters to a local village review board. The letter writers variously objected to "the size, scale, scope and ‘visual incompatibility’ of a speculative home” proposed for the vacant lot at 483 Hill Street—a neighborhood where " nearly a dozen nearby residences are more than a century old and roughly half or a third the size.”
Mr. Farrell does have his supporters too. Four of the five closest neighbors to 483 Hill Street wrote in support of the proposed new house.
As Mr. Farrell tells The Wall Street Journal: "People know when I build near their homes, I raise the value of everything around me, that's just a fact.”
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