Restrictions and billionaires don’t really belong in the same sentence. As much as we lesser mortals think that is true, reality couldn’t be further from it. Case in point is Billionaire Bunker and its stern rules. The under-construction future home of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez in Indian Creek Village, an upscale secluded island community off Surfside and Miami Beach has all the trappings of ultra-high-net-worth living, and all the rules too.
One may spend $100 million on a house but they still have to follow the Indian Creek Village Code. From not allowing grass to grow more than six inches, to deciding the height and paint of a house to fences, pools, driveways, generators, docks and accessory buildings, the list is exhaustive, and amusingly, residents have little say in any of it.
According to the Miami Herald this is a way of maintaining uniformity in the village and non-compliance with the rules can earn the well-heeled residents a fine of up to $500 per day. Granted, that measly amount would mean nothing to famous billionaire residents like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Brady, Carl Icahn and Norman Braman. It is roughly 21 cents an hour against a fortune reported in the $200 billion range. But the one rule that will surely have an impact on one particular resident of Indian Creek Village is the no-helicopter-and-helipad rule. The resident most impacted by this would be Mrs Bezos, the first lady of the $500 million Koru megayacht, who loves taking to the skies in her chopper as much as she loves sailing to pristine spots aboard the 416-foot Oceanco mammoth.
What happens on Abeona clearly doesn’t happen on Billionaire Bunker where the regulations explicitly state that “in no instance” can a landing or storage area for a helicopter or other aircraft be allowed as an accessory use. The 56-year-old former TV anchor may hop onto the Airbus H145 and head to the $75 million support vessel Abeona or closer to home at the Watson Island Heliport, Miami. She could also disembark at Miami-Opa Locka Executive (OPF), where Bezos’s Gulfstream G700 is based, but from there to her $234 million plots, it is a definite car ride.
The accomplished licensed pilot takes a lot of pride in her flying endeavors, having founded Black Ops Aviation a decade ago. Her personal aircraft is a Bell 429, costing over $6 million that she lovingly refers to as her ‘baby.’ The woman who even flew to space told The Wall Street Journal that she was flying at least three times a week to stay current. She may have to rethink that weekly flying schedule once the Indian Creek mansion is ready. As much as she would’ve liked to land anywhere on the 18-hole course that occupies the bulk of the land, it is categorically not available as a landing zone either.
Between the residential ban and the exhaustive REC list, there is no zoning district on Indian Creek where a helicopter can legally touch down. There is little left to do but appreciate the plus points like round-the-clock security as the village boasts its own police department, land and marine patrol, and a single guarded bridge. The 103-page code with its strict helicopter bans is, unfortunately for Lauren Sanchez, part of the parcel too.