Trending

Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Top-Secret $100 Million Hawaii Compound

In this photo taken July 7, 2014, people sunbathe at Papakolea green sand beach near Ocean View, Hawaii. Online auction and sales company eBay has removed multiple listings of sand said to be taken from Hawaii beaches. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported Saturday, Nov. 4, 2017, that it asked the company about the listings before they were taken down. Among them was a listing claiming to have sand from Papakolea Beach, also known as Green Sands Beach. (AP Photo/Marco Garcia)
  • OFF THE TWO-LANE highway that winds along the northeast side of the Hawaiian island of Kauai, on a quiet stretch of ranchland between the tourist hubs of Kapaa and Hanalei, an enormous, secret construction project is underway.
  • A 6-foot wall blocks the view from a nearby road fronting the project, where cars slow to try to catch a glimpse of what’s behind it. Security guards stand watch at an entrance gate and patrol the surrounding beaches on ATVs. Pickup trucks roll in and out, hauling building materials and transporting hundreds of workers.
  • Nobody working on this project is allowed to talk about what they’re building. Almost anyone who passes compound security—from carpenters to electricians to painters to security guards—is bound by a strict nondisclosure agreement, according to several workers involved in the project. And, they say, these agreements aren’t a formality.
  • Multiple workers claim they saw or heard about colleagues removed from the project for posting about it on social media. Different construction crews within the site are assigned to separate projects and workers are forbidden from speaking with other crews about their work, sources say.
  • “It’s fight club. We don’t talk about fight club,” says David, one former contractor.
BACK TO HOMEPAGE