Winnetka, Illinois, is a cocoon of wealth, where lakeside homes can fetch $12 million, parking lots teem with Range Rovers and Teslas, and comparatively poor households still might earn $225,000 per year. But even here, in America’s ninth-richest town, locals are astonished, even appalled, at the way a billionaire is splashing out.
Since 2020, private equity mogul Justin Ishbia—a co-owner of the Phoenix Suns—has acquired four properties along Lake Michigan, three of which are contiguous. He tried to swap the fourth parcel with the village last year in exchange for land it owned between his properties, but the deal went epically awry and is now either dormant or dead.
Undeterred, Ishbia is using his three adjacent lots to build the house of his dreams. A very vocal contingent of Winnetkans, who claim the home will span 68,000 square feet, aren’t happy about having a palace in their midst.
ADVERTISEMENT
On Nextdoor, a social media app for neighborhoods, dozens of people have flamed Ishbia, referring to his planned home as “a cathedral erected to worship greed, narcissism, and wholesale disregard for nature.”
Residents are particularly fired up about mature trees that were chopped down to allow for construction, the removal of a lakeside bluff, and work trucks that barrel down local roads. Some people also worry that, should Ishbia ever tire of the town, he won’t be able to find a buyer for his massive home, leaving the property indefinitely vacant.
“This house will become the ‘Michael Jordan house’ of Winnetka in 30 years and will never be able to be resold,” a resident wrote on Nextdoor, referring to Jordan’s Highland Park mansion, which has been on the market for a decade.
Speaking to The Daily Beast, Ishbia defended his project and his reputation. “Some people don’t have all the information,” he said, but “everything we are doing has been fully permitted.” His team, composed of “some of the best architects and the best builders” has worked diligently to “follow all the laws,” he added.
Ishbia declined to comment on the size of the planned home, other than to say that members of the community include the basement in their estimates of square footage. The trees, he continued, were removed only after consultation with a village forester and will be replaced at the required density when construction is finished. Similarly, he said, “the bluff will be restored consistent with the permits that we’ve received.” Will it look the same? “No,” he conceded. “But I’m very confident it will fit into the community in a very similar way.”
Opinions in town are split on who is responsible for the debacle or whether Ishbia has even done anything wrong. “If these folks can afford to build this luxurious lifestyle and maintain their property… I don’t care. I mean, it’s not hurting me. It’s increasing my land value,” said Marilyn Zimmerman, who moved to Winnetka in 1986. In a separate text message, she acknowledged that people in the area “flaunt their great wealth… No Chevy’s around here, land of the Bentleys and BMW’s!”
Joni Johnson, former chair of the village zoning board, added that residents had previously refused to give authorities the power to block this kind of mega-project. “This town is basically very libertarian. It could barely pass a leash law,” she said. During her term, even modest affordable housing proposals sparked “hysteria,” she recalled, and the plans were dropped.
By the time Ishbia rolled into town, “Winnetka basically had nothing in their arsenal that they could do to stop this,” she said. “I feel that a lot of the attacks on the homeowner are misplaced, because he just took advantage of [that] fact.” In a sense, Johnson argued, Winnetka got “what it deserved.”
A spokesperson for the village declined to comment.
Ishbia’s properties have spurred endless rounds of drama among local officials. Last year’s land-swap deal disintegrated in part because he insisted on the installation of a privacy shield between his private beach and the public’s, a stipulation that generated immense backlash.
“This issue has divided this community and it’s very unfortunate,” Park District Commissioner Colleen Root told The Daily Beast in August. Another board official, Warren James, reportedly said last summer that the park district board had thought about suing Ishbia, then reconsidered whether tangling with a billionaire was “a good idea.”
Ishbia’s wife, Kristen, told village trustees, in tears, that because of the slow-moving approval process for their lots, “our children are missing out on being able to attend school here, play in our yard, and make friends in the neighborhood.” (Some locals questioned why the couple didn’t just rent or buy a smaller home while they waited.)
Ishbia’s project is just the latest controversy involving a billionaire and a wealthy enclave. Last year, for instance, hedge fund tycoon Ken Griffin ignited similar unrest among his well-heeled neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida, over the development of a massive estate stretching across 1,400 feet of coastline.
Ishbia’s younger brother Mat, a fellow Suns owner, is also causing a stir 300 miles east, in the suburbs of Detroit. There, he is in the process of tearing down five homes to build an epic chateau that will feature a lazy river, a trampoline park, an “enchanted forest,” and artificial islands. (Tragically, zoning board members—one of whom requested “a season pass” to the property—shot down his proposal for a zip line.) “He’s building an amusement park,” a neighbor told the Detroit Free Press.
But the squabbling in Winnetka is perhaps even more charged. “Without this ‘investment’ in our community we’re still one of the wealthiest suburbs in the country (I’m trying to say this objectively without cringing),” one resident declared on Nextdoor. “We were doing just fine before Ishbia’s shenanigans, and we’d be doing just fine without him.”
Mary Garrison—who said she didn’t have thoughts “either way” on the house—lamented how the birds in Ishbia’s former bluff “came back home and they didn’t have a home.” Johnson also grumbled about the impact of trucks on the neighborhood’s ambience. They are “making it impossible for me to enjoy my property in the summer and putting bicyclists’ and pedestrians’ lives in danger,” she said. “I feel like I’m living in an urban jungle.”
