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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe House That Ate the Hamptons
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/07/house-ate-hamptons-ira-rennertThis weekend, Mitt Romney made a very profitable swing through the Hamptons. On the agenda: A trio of fundraisers, including a $50,000-a-head party at David Koch's $18 million estate and a shindig at financier Ronald Perelman's 57-acre estate, home to "the most outstanding private conifer collection in the United States." But those spreads have nothing on billionaire Ira Rennert's estate in Sagaponack (which, sadly for Romney, did not host a fundraiser).
Thought to be America's largest inhabited residence, Fair Field cost $100 million to build and is worth at least $200 million. The 110,000-square-foot complex has 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms, three pools, two libraries, a bowling alley, a playground, a full theater, its own power plant, and a garage for 100 cars. The main building is 66,000 square feet, 28 times bigger than the average new house. It's the third-largest private home in America. (No. 1 is the 174,000- square-foot Biltmore Estate.) The mansion even inspired a novel, The House That Ate the Hamptons. Kurt Vonnegut called it "the greatest book ever written." In a rare public appearance, Rennert described his mega-mansion as "old age and loneliness insurance."
A local architect who approved the project praised its "restrained classic design." Or, as one local put it to MoJo's Josh Harkinson, "It's a fucking monster!" Fair Field is now at the heart of a new controversy between Rennert and his slightly less affluent neighbors, who have accused him of "practicing class warfare" with his noisy private helicopters. Seriously. Check it out.
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)I'd hate to have to find a bathroom in a barn like that.
Viking12
(6,012 posts)HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Wouldn't that be a Christmas Tree Farm?
deutsey
(20,166 posts)CanonRay
(14,113 posts)IMHO
Romulox
(25,960 posts)What good is being rich when YOU are the one being looked down upon!
ArnoldLayne
(2,068 posts)I've worked at that Mill for 32 years. Old Ira bought it about 3 years ago, filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in early June, shut us down today. My last day worked was this past Friday afternoon turn. This is technically my first day as a Laid-Off Steelworker. Thanks old buddy... Ira "you shriveled up, ugly ass old greedy Capitalist Prick who I hope rots in hell, along with your Son's who are part owners" Rennert.
Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)aint_no_life_nowhere
(21,925 posts)How can you live the life of a Roman Emperor without one?
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)They should learn from the french.
hughee99
(16,113 posts)xchrom
(108,903 posts)you can bet they'll grease as many palms as it takes.
more to the repukes this year than other times -- but the dems will get a cut too.
the 1% are trying to battle their own bad PR at this point as much as anything -- and repukes are good stand ins for that.
ArnoldLayne
(2,068 posts)and Finishing Mill. Our Martins Ferry Ohio Plant is a Galvanizing or Zinc Coating Mill. They are filled up with coils, no room for anymore Steel that we sent them from Yorkville Works. They ran out of Zinc for coating the Steel in May. Ira said he doesn't have any money to purchase any Zinc. It's like going into a pizza shop asking for extra cheese and extra pepperoni and the owner laughs at you and say's we don't even have cheese or pepperoni. All we have is pizza with just sauce only, sorry.
otohara
(24,135 posts)Kids are sick in Peru - Ira Rennert could give a shit.
American Ira Rennert is the CEO of the Renco Group Inc., a corporation known for its disastrous environmental record. Rencos Doe Run Peru subsidiary controls one of the ten worst environmental sites in the world in La Oroya, Peru, according to the Blacksmith Institute. This lead smelter has been a cash cow for billionaire Rennerts offshore companies. It has also exposed thousands of Peruvians to extraordinary high levels of lead contamination. Most of children in La Oroya have lead poisoning.
Doe Run Peru
Despite spending hundreds of thousands of dollar lobbying the Obama administration to try and save Doe Run Peru, Rennerts company has been forced to submit yet another restructuring plan to try to avoid liquidation of its interest in the notorious lead smelter. Peruvian and U.S. sources say Rennerts representatives are trying to secure financing packages that would satisfy their largest creditor: the Peruvian government. But since La Republica, Perus most influential newspaper, has been focusing on the La Oroya controversy, the government has taken a much tougher line.
Until 2009, Doe Run Peru produced large profits for Rennerts companies through its smelting operations. As the current government began to focus on La Oroya and demand the promised changes, Rennerts company threatened to pull out of Peru altogether. The standoff caused the smelter to be shuttered in 2009 putting thousands of workers on the street. Doe Roe Peru charged that it was the Peruvian government that had failed to live up to its agreements to clean up parts of the site. The government and Doe Run Peru blamed each other about who was responsible for the long postponed much needed massive clean-up and environmental remediation.
Offshore companies controlled by New York billionaire Rennert took over the operation when Peru was being run by the corrupt Fujimori regime in the 1990s. At the time, Rennerts subsidiary, Doe Run Peru, had agreed to make large investments in the smelter to mitigate the environmental damage it was causing in exchange for the rights to exploit the facility. The chaos after the 2000 change in the Peruvian leadership allowed Rennerts companies to pull vast amounts of money out of La Oroya without ever completing all the promised environmental investments in the facility.http://www.dcbureau.org/201206177442/bulldog-blog/rennerts-peru-smelter-in-trouble.html