Utah’s Richest Man Ignites Feud Over Park City Mega-Mansion

It was lunchtime on Thursday, and tech billionaire Matthew Prince was riding a ski lift above the jagged peaks of Park City, Utah, as he does every afternoon before heading back to work. Usually, Prince noshes quietly on a sandwich, but on this day he was animated and a little bit grumpy as he defended his plan to build a mega-mansion above the city’s historic Old Town—a proposal that has some neighbors up in arms.

“This is essentially just two rich people fighting with each other, which is silly, but here we are,” he told The Daily Beast.

It’s more than just two people. Prince’s main adversaries are his neighbors Eric Hermann and Susan Fredston-Hermann, who filed an appeal this month after he received approval to build the home. Eight other Park City property owners joined the appeal, arguing that the proposal would flout local zoning laws.

Prince did not appreciate the obstruction. On Monday, his LLC, Pesky Porcupine, filed a lawsuit against the Hermanns alleging that their Bernese mountain dogs “have aggressively approached, chased, and harassed” people on Prince’s property. As an added insult, the complaint described the couple as “senior and frail,” and physically incapable of controlling the animals. (“Both of them are in amazing shape,” retorted the Hermanns’ friend and fellow appellant John Vrabel.)

An attorney for the Hermanns said the timing of the lawsuit “suggests a connection” to his clients’ appeal, and Prince hardly denied that. “I think it’s pretty reasonable that at some point you say enough is enough. Especially if they're kind of suing you, or at least appealing your ability to build a house,” he said.

Forty-nine years old, baby faced, and worth an estimated $3.4 billion, Prince is accustomed to controversy. His publicly traded firm, Cloudflare, helps websites defend themselves against cyberattacks and in the past has faced calls to refuse its services to online bad actors, like white supremacist sites, doxxers, and noxious message boards. By comparison, the homebuilding kerfuffle would seem to be manageable.

Prince said he was “a bit puzzled” that the controversy had generated outside interest, “but such, I guess, is my life these days.” He attributed much of the blowback to misinformation. Some of his opponents, he noted, live miles away from the property, while others may not realize the site is exempt from certain zoning regulations because of a decades-old agreement with the town.

“They went through a two-year-plus public process and complied with all the rules, [and] made lots and lots and lots of changes to the designs,” added his attorney Bruce Baird. “The Princes aren’t bullying anyone, they’re simply trying to protect their rights. And I think, frankly, the Hermanns are the ones that are trying to bully the Princes, sort of by reverse victimology.”

The situation mirrors other recent flare-ups involving wealthy landowners—in Florida, Chicago, Wyoming, and elsewhere—as residents chafe at the influence wielded by their billionaire neighbors.

In Prince’s case, he and his wife, Tatiana, own a local newspaper, the Park Record, and last year he allegedly tried to circumvent Park City authorities by hiring a lobbyist and having the state legislature discreetly authorize his plans. As The Salt Lake Tribune reported, “a few seemingly innocuous sentences were slipped into a bill that would have essentially given Prince carte blanche.” Park City’s mayor called the bill “special treatment of one resident over the community.” In the end, Prince backed off.

Even if the unrest is partly attributable to paranoia or confusion, as Prince contends, his antagonists believe he represents a danger to egalitarianism in the increasingly wealthy ski destination, where the average home is worth more than $1.5 million.

Prince “has seemingly BOUGHT preferential treatment for his request,” former city council member Jim Doilney wrote in an email to the planning department in February, according to public filings. “I am extremely upset to think our town’s soul is seemingly being sold. Please treat him like everyone else.”

Raised in Park City, Prince studied computer science and English at Trinity College before earning a law degree from the University of Chicago in 2000. Seven years later, he enrolled at Harvard Business School, where he and another student won the business plan competition by pitching the idea for Cloudflare. They launched the company with a third co-founder in 2009, and Prince moved to the Bay Area.

Years later, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many affluent techies fled to the mountains, and Prince relocated to Park City. “My wife, who’s actually from Boston originally, sort of fell in love with the place, and we decided to stay,” he said. “Never imagined I’d be back here.”

In 2020, the couple bought their now-embattled property on King Road. The lot featured two separate homes, at least one of which the previous owners had rented out to short-term guests. According to Prince, those vacationers caused headaches for the neighborhood.

“You’d find some Psi U pledge kid drunk and naked in your backyard at all hours of the night,” he said, arguing that his plan to build a single residence and live there full-time would greatly improve the community. (Whether short-term guests caused problems is a matter of some dispute. Vrabel told The Daily Beast he has lived nearby for 55 years and has “never heard one thing like that.” Another Park City resident, developer Jerry Fiat—who had a construction project next door—said some renters did indeed host parties.)

After buying the property, Prince said, he went out of his way to earn his neighbors’ trust. Virtually all of them, “with the exception of the Hermanns,” backed his proposal, he said.

“If you’ve seen the plans, they’re gorgeous,” said neighbor Ben Dahl, a venture capitalist who has known Prince for years. “It’s a really interesting nod to this mining history.”

Pat Sweeney, another resident, also endorsed the billionaire. “I’ve met some real assholes in my life,” he said. “I don’t pretend to be his buddy or anything, but… I think he’s comported himself very well in this whole thing.” Sweeney’s family negotiated with Park City in the 1980s to exempt seven lots from the normal zoning rules, he said, including the one purchased by Prince.

The regulations are extraordinarily complex, and Prince told The Daily Beast he had difficulty getting city officials to sign off on his plans. “For a while they were just like, ‘This seems complicated, we don’t want to deal with it.’ And that was frustrating,” he said. As a result, Prince continued, he tried to route his proposal through the state legislature. He claimed he reversed course once local authorities agreed to engage, adding that the process has since been much smoother. (“Not accurate,” a Park City spokesperson said. “City professionals have been consistently responsive to the applicant’s team during this process.")

Sweeney, who believes Prince has “not been treated fairly” by local officials, nevertheless objected to the state legislature ploy. “My brother and I got sideways on that with him early on,” he said. “I mean, we had some fairly significant disagreements. That was one of them.”

This February, the planning commission voted 4-2 to green-light elements of Prince’s proposal. But the Hermanns and their cohort refuse to back down.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, they believe his building plans are far out of compliance. The proposed structure, they say, is nearly double the 27-foot height limit, while the home’s footprint is allegedly more than triple the maximum allowed. “While no single floor is larger than the allowed 3,500 square feet, the way the floors are staggered means the entire footprint of the home would be roughly 11,300 square feet,” the paper said, summarizing the opposition. Prince has insisted the home is compliant, and he pegs the footprint of the living space at “just shy” of 3,500 square feet.

As Fiat tells it, the commotion fits a pattern of NIMBYism in Park City, which is home to 8,400 permanent residents. “It’s a running joke in town: You live there for a year, and then you consider yourself a local and you don’t want anyone else to move in,” he said. In this case, “we just happen to have a high-profile individual who has deeper pockets and is not afraid to take on a fight.” Fiat, who said he built the Hermanns’ home, pointed out that their residence is also extremely large.

Prince defended his decision to escalate the conflict by filing his lawsuit this week. The Hermanns’ dogs, Sasha and Mocha, chased his 80-year-old mother and terrified his nanny, he said, “and they were defecating all over the place.” (Neighbors had conflicting opinions on whether the lawsuit’s claims are true. Dahl contended that the dogs are often unleashed and “uncontrolled,” while another resident, who asked not to be named, said otherwise: “I’ve known those dogs for a long time. I’ve never seen them be aggressive.”)

As Prince’s case continues to generate local attention, including by media outlets KPCW and the Park Record, the rumor mill is also swirling. Two residents told The Daily Beast that Prince had promised a large donation to the Park City Historical Society and Museum in exchange for its support. Both the museum and Prince emphatically denied that, though museum Executive Director Morgan Pierce did write an effusive letter in 2022 declaring that Prince’s home would be an “homage to our incredible mining past” and an “improvement to the city skyline.”

The gossip is only stirring more alarm, both among Prince’s vocal opponents and those who feel they can’t speak up. “People are scared,” said one Park City resident who has lived in the area for decades. “When the richest guy in Utah moves to your town, I mean, he could tie you up for years in litigation.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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