PeopleSoft Founder Scales Down Home Plan
Bowing to pressure from his would-be neighbors, high-tech billionaire David Duffield has backed off plans to build a home that would have eclipsed the Hearst Castle.
He has instead settled on a more modest, 17,000-square-foot mansion.
Duffield made his $1.1-billion fortune as founder of business software maker PeopleSoft Inc. He had planned to build a 72,000-square-foot residence, considerably larger than the Hearst Castle, a 60,645-square-foot monument to the extravagance of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
“It was too large, and people didn’t like the placement of it,” Jim Dugdale, Duffield’s project manager, told the Contra Costa Times.
Duffield, 65, might still have to make more concessions before he can build on the 22-acre site in Alamo, an affluent suburb about 30 miles east of San Francisco.
The homeowners in the subdivision where Duffield wants to live have been circulating a petition that would amend the neighborhood’s rules to forbid buildings larger than 10,000 square feet.
