Big spenders head eastâwith one very notable exception. By Seattle Met Staff 4/22/2021 at 9:20am Mercer Island is, let's say, exclusive. When people talk about Seattle's billionaires, they don't often mean Seattle's billionaires. Sure, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz still lives within city limits, but our other famous three-comma club members (is Bezos at four yet?) actually reside in the Eastside suburbs. Amazon's founder owns a house in Medina, a small city on Lake Washington that's still big enough for his richest-man-in-the-world forebearer, Bill Gates, to also call home. And Steve Ballmer, the one-time Microsoft CEO and current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, recently bought another pad in Hunts Point.