Billionaire Peter Thiel refused consent for sprawling lodge in New Zealand
The billionaire Peter Thiel’s plans for an elaborate bunker-like lodge in a remote part of New Zealand’s South Island have been thwarted, after the local council decided the home would have too great a negative impact on the surrounding landscape.
Second Star, a New Zealand company owned by the PayPal co-founder, had applied to build the sprawling lakeside complex in Wanaka, an alpine South Island region known for its natural beauty and isolation. The plans were fiercely opposed by conservationists, who claimed in submissions that the lodge would “destroy our beautiful lake environment”.
On Thursday, Queenstown-Lakes district council refused to grant consent for the lodge to be built.
Thiel – an outspoken libertarian and early Facebook investor – is one of a number of super-rich speculators who began buying up remote boltholes in New Zealand, in preparation for apocalyptic social, political or environmental disintegration. He had previously discussed flying out to the country as a backup plan in the event of a pandemic, or global societal collapse, his friend the entrepreneur Sam Altman told the New Yorker in 2016.
Architectural drawings show an undulating building, embedded in the hillside and partly hidden from view. Consent documents described “a series of stand-alone buildings, including a lodge for visitor accommodation for up to 24 guests, accommodation pod for the owner, together with associated lodge management buildings, infrastructure, landscape treatment, water features and meditation space”.
Plans for the meditation pod were scrapped from the final proposal, but the earthworks required to build the lodge would still cover more than 73,700 sq metres (18 acres) of land. The structure was designed by the Japanese
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