Bet365 boss and the world’s highest paid businesswoman Denise Coates is planning on building a £90m estate – which includes an enormous statement glass home.
The 51-year-old who paid herself £265million last year – equivalent to £726k a day – reportedly ‘offered silly money’ to her neighbours to acquire their houses as part of the show-stopping 52-acre estate.
The plans, approved last year, include an enormous glass ‘statement home’, a lake and boat house, sunken tennis court and a summer house.
There will also be an estate keeper’s cottage, gate house, stables and manège, as well as landscaped parkland. The estate will sit behind two-metre high fences guarded by 24-hour security.
Stunning images show just how grand the plans are with striking open plan rooms, floor to ceiling windows and a long winding driveway.
However, although Ms Coates has been hailed by locals in the past for her sizable charitable donations, the development has ruffled feathers of those living in the quiet Cheshire parish.
One family’s farmhouse would have been surrounded on three sides by the estate had they had refused to sell.
So the family eventually relented after increasingly “stupid” offers from Ms Coates, reports The Times.
A friend said: “None of us want to leave because it’s a nice area but they offered us too much and we couldn’t refuse. It was stupid money.”
Jean Batchelor, 77, a friend of an elderly farmer who has refused to sell to Ms Coates, added to the newspaper: “[Ms Coates] has been buying up properties in the area and offering silly money, causing arguments where in some cases a son wants to sell and the mother and father don’t."
Meanwhile, another told the Daily Mail: "It seems that Denise Coates wants to be the lady of the manor around here, and with all the money she’s got she must think she can buy anything.
"But my husband was born in this house, my family live here very happily, and we’re staying put.
"I think the way she earns her money is immoral, disgraceful. People get addicted (to gambling) and it puts pressure on them. They can lose their family and their home."
Ms Coates, who has five children, four of whom she adopted, has had her new home designed by Sir Norman Foster’s company, Foster + Partners.
The council has also agreed to close a public road for up to two years while the estate is built – to the dismay of locals.
One, who can see an enormous yellow crane from her house, said: “I suppose it’s the wielding of power that this money gives them that sticks in the throat.”
Ms Coates, who met husband Richard Smith at university, made her fortune after setting up Bet365, based in Stoke-on-Trent, in 2001.
She bought the domain off eBay for £20,000 after seeing a gap in the market online.
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