3/9/2024 0 Comments Richard finch little stevenIt was on those fields that the wedding reception took place. Then in September 2020, the family paid Duncan another $15 million for 22 acres directly across the street (roughly 18 times what the property had sold for 12 years earlier), to further secure their privacy. Months later, the Gateses bought their neighbors’ home for $2.5 million, paying three times the 2008 price to secure the unlisted property. In 2018, they purchased a 124-acre farm from Target heir and race car driver Dayton Duncan for nearly $16 million. Through LLCs, Bill and Melinda Gates quietly spent at least $34 million buying up several properties on picturesque Mills Road in recent years and gifted it to their equestrian daughter. The reception, where Coldplay, Paul McCartney and Alicia Keys all reportedly performed, took place on a giant field in three temporary glass structures across from her sprawling Evergates Stables. North Salem was a fitting setting for the glamorous October 2021 wedding of Jennifer Gates and Nayel Nassar, both professional show jumpers. Jenn Gates has placed in the top ten of multiple equestrian competitions and represented the United States on Nations Cup teams in 20. Meet some of the wealthiest property owners riding high in North Salem. *Note: I am a resident of Croton Falls, NY, a hamlet of North Salem. “Everyone appreciates North Salem,” says longtime resident and head of the town planning board Cynthia Curtis, “and it wouldn’t be this way if not for the people who choose to live here and own the large parcels.” It also helps that nearly all of these wealthy landowners get tax benefits along with their huge parcels of land, either from putting acres into conservation easements or qualifying for agricultural exemptions. After philanthropist Ronald Stanton, founder of petrochemicals company Transammonia, died in 2016, two of his monied neighbors-Dinan and financier Steve Rattner-reportedly purchased his hundreds of acres to ensure that no one else developed the land. The foundation gets support from some of the town’s wealthy residents who are also board members-including McDonald’s franchise multimillionaire Bruce Colley and Target heir Duncan Dayton, who sold more than 140 acres to the Gates family. In 1974, a group of property owners created the North Salem Open Land Foundation, which has acquired 858 acres in town and holds conservation easements over another 500 acres. Residents have long sought to protect North Salem’s rural identity. “If you want to be left alone, you are left alone.” “One of the nicest parts of North Salem is people don’t count other people’s money,” says the town’s deputy supervisor Peter Kamenstein. It helps that residents respect others’ privacy.
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