Washington Post
Former Gannett CEO Craig Dubow and his wife filed a lawsuit in April objecting to a neighbor’s planned mansion modeled on Versailles. In the Washington Post, Justin Jouvenal reports the builder of the project in their McLean, Va., neighborhood says the house’s owner has decided to build elsewhere.
Neither Dubow nor Young Yi, the businesswoman for whom the house would be built, was available for comment. Builder Mike Mafi told Jouvenal the house “would cost between $12 million and $15 million to build, not the $15 to $20 million previously estimated by builders and real estate agents. He added that if he builds the home elsewhere, he would try to do it on a 10- to 15-acre lot to avoid problems with neighbors.”
The planned mansion was to be 25,424 square feet and would have featured “stone columns, arched windows, a curved roof and landscaping that echo the famed French palace,” Jouvenal wrote in April. “True to its moniker, the mansion will be illuminated by an extensive underground lighting system.” Property owners in Dubow’s exclusive neighborhood objected to the ostentatious house, whose design Yi advertised via billboards.
In 2011, Gannett was criticized for the $37 million bonus Dubow received when he retired from the company, which shed nearly 20,000 jobs while he was CEO.
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