Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce had just won their neighbors’ permission for landscaping plans at their $5.35 million mansion when new complaints stalled the process again.
The couple, who married in July 2026, have been battling with other residents of Bratenahl, a village in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County on the southern shore of Lake Erie.
They had already been rejected twice for plans to erect a six-foot-tall aluminum fence around the property and plant about 50 towering trees around the mansion.
As the appeal for the fence was unanimously approved last month, longtime residents pulled out all the stops to thwart the plans, raising more issues, including labeling the pair “absentee owners.”
“What am I going to do when I have 50 evergreen trees on my sewer line, and they’re gone?” one neighbor argued.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce have been accused of ruining “peace and quiet” in the village
Swift and Kelce purchased the 21,000-square-foot luxury mansion in Bratenahl, near the latter’s hometown of Cleveland Heights, for months before they tied the knot.
The property has eight bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, a two-bedroom guest cottage, a resort-style pool, and a converted ballroom/game room.
After months of appeals, they were finally allowed to build the six-foot fence for their private oasis last month, after neighbors on both sides objected for more than an hour.
Katherine Bolton, who has lived next door to the mansion for 35 years, told the village’s Architectural Review Board at the time that news of her new neighbors had been a “tremendous blow” to “the peace and quiet in Bratenahl.”
However, a Daily Mail report said the 72-page meeting transcript did not mention Swift and Kelce by name even once.
But at a hearing on Tuesday, October 6, Bolton finally said out loud that the house was “recently purchased by Travis Kelce.”
Neighbors have argued that the couple’s plans would cause multiple structural problems
At the previous meeting, Bolton argued that she has been quoted $75,000 to line a sewer pipe that she believes Swift and Kelce’s beautification plans would greatly harm.
“Planting 50 evergreen trees just ten feet from a 100-year-old clay sewer line is virtually guaranteed to cause severe root intrusion, pipe structural failure, and catastrophic sewage backups,” she said, citing AI-based research.
Chuck Bauernschmidt, another neighbor who has lived two doors down for 39 years, produced photographs of the property, alleging “total clear-cutting of the shrubbery and everything else.”
Bauernschmidt also warned that the fence’s spear-topped design could endanger wildlife, as deer have been known to get caught on the points.
While the board acknowledged that the owners have “higher security needs” than most, Katherine Bolton’s husband Bill argued that their fence would not keep paparazzi out.
“I think that the greater security threat for the applicant is from drones and the water,” Bill said, adding that he believes paparazzi can be “pretty aggressive.”
Swift and Kelce would now need a new plan for a third time
Jacob Kutz of Tiny Construction, who is running the project, argued that the couple has already paid $7,500 to fix a broken section of the sewer Katherine Bolton is worried about, “without asking for any help, just to show we’re good neighbors.”
They also moved the fence two feet inside the property’s own boundary, added two gates so Bolton could still access the sewer, one gate for Bauernschmidt, dropped the plan to run it down to the water, and cut back trees on the neighbors’ land at their own cost.
Despite their efforts, the board held off on approving the saplings along the shoreline at Tuesday’s meeting, ruling that those trees would stand too tall even if pruned.
However, they approved the landscaping plans at the front of the estate on the condition that trees on the south side are spaced far enough apart to mature properly.
The village’s rulebook caps lakefront fences at 2.5 feet unless they are at least 75% see-through, to protect “the shoreline, views of Lake Erie, and property values.”
The couple must now return with a new plan for a third time.
“If they want to plant trees, they can plant trees,” one user commented
