AVALON, N.J. (1010 WINS) -- A man's home is his castle, especially when it has 11 bedrooms, at least 15 bathrooms, a sauna and a swimming pool.
The nearly 15,000-square-foot mansion being built for snack-food king Michael Rice and his wife will have about 40 rooms spread over three levels, plus a three-car garage.
Even by the lofty standards of this ritzy beach town, that's a lot of potato chips.
Yet the mansion for Rice, chief executive of Hanover, Pa.-based Utz Quality Foods, is going up along some of New Jersey's oldest and most natural dunes, despite a state law forbidding such construction.
Rice, who acquired the one-acre parcel in 2000 for $3.5 million, sued the state, arguing the prohibition was a ``taking'' that would prevent him from enjoying his investment.
The state decided not to fight, choosing instead to work with Rice to reduce the home's size from its original blueprint of more than 20,000 square feet, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Construction began in April and could take more than a year; it's not clear how much the house will be worth until after it is built and assessed. The new home replaces a smaller one that had roughly the same footprint as the pool for the Rices' new abode.
Calls to Rice's office and to an Utz corporate communications office were not returned.
Rice already owns one of Avalon's priciest homes, a 7,132-square-foot oceanfront house with an assessed value of $8.74 million.
Some neighbors resent the size of his new house.
``I just don't think it belongs there,'' said Elmer Parsons, 82. ``The name of the game down here, as I see it, is greed.''
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