The voters in Texas and Ohio will help decide today whether Hillary Clinton still has a chance to move back into the White House, but the architect of her campaign has already made his play in Washington real estate.
Mark Penn, a highly influential adviser to Fortune 500 companies and a top Clinton aide, is in the midst of a multimillion-dollar renovation to his Georgetown home that’s making waves in some circles.
Penn didn’t return calls from The Examiner to explain the scope of the work.
Neighbors and the gossip columnists at the New York Post’s Page Six, though, have taken note of Penn’s plans to build an underground driveway and other outsized renovations.
With workers on the site most daytime hours, the labor is hard to miss. The residence itself is harder to spot behind bales of hay and a portable toilet out front.
Even the adjacent sidewalk has cones to keep pedestrians away.
The swanky O Street corridor where Penn resides is lined with towering row houses, and the nearby section of Wisconsin Avenue features a host of upscale boutiques, making it that much more noticeable.
Neighbors, though, told The Examiner it hasn’t been much more of a disturbance than the less obvious but fairly frequent renovation projects in the general vicinity.
Interior designer Billy Neithamer of Billy Deluxe Designs, though, said he could see how some neighbors might get a little put out at the scope of the improvements.
He’s witnessed similar celebrity cases where families of note were the targets of criticism for trying to make drastic home improvements.
“Everyone’s afraid that people are overdoing it,” he said. “That’s just how Georgetown is.”
Penn, the author of the 2007 book “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes,” is the worldwide chief executive officer of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller and president of the consulting firm Penn, Schoen and Berland.
According to D.C. tax records, Penn purchased the home in 2003 for abut $5.2 million. It’s now valued at $7.1 million.
