Original Scotland Yard site to become hotel ‘of the quality of Chateau Marmont’
An Edwardian building on the site of the original Scotland Yard is to be converted into a 92,000 square foot, 235-bedroom 5-star hotel of the “world class… quality of The Mercer or the Chateau Marmont” (more…)
This Lancastrian tycoon transformed the Dragons’ Den with her 80s style shoulder pads and comments such as “he made my foot itch”. Thrice married Devey has five homes around the world and claims to have “felt sexism in every way conceiveable”. She’s “proud to pay tax” and dubs David Cameron “weak”. By ‘eck.
Living life to the full Donald G. Abbey style
“Why pay less when you can pay more?” is a mantra that some strangely choose to live by. In my time, I have encountered a couple with a different Ferrari for each day of the week, someone who proudly declared their home had a window for each day of the year and an heiress who insists upon the local baker feeding her dog daily with a freshly baked caviar pie.
When I discovered a house in California priced at $78,000,000, I didn’t expect to subsequently find out that the same vendor is also selling another of his homes in Montana at the very same price. Having done a little research into Donald G. Abbey, the commercial real estate tycoon who owns both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, I discovered that here indeed is another personality whose excess knows no bounds.
I suppose when people sell homes of this worth, the asking price they set is quite irrelevant. “What,” I’m sure they ask, “is $5 million between friends?” Equally, when it comes to developing such properties, characters of this nature do not show any reserve. Bling is most definitely the order of the day and the larger and flashier one can build, I guess, the better.
Abbey’s Bradbury Estate is a case in point. This vast property consists of a 33,000 square foot main house with 7 bedrooms and 10 bathrooms. It is almost entirely made of French limestone and includes a chef’s kitchen with a pizza oven, a 2,000 bottle wine cellar, an oak paneled elevator and a leather paneled poker room. Bedrooms include domes with hand painted frescos and in addition there is a detached 6,700 square foot guest house above a 10 car garage and a 5,700 square foot pool house with a catering kitchen, gym, massage room and a subterranean EPA certified 25 yard rifle shooting range complete with a gun storage room and 2 large safes.
Within the 8 acre grounds there is a cross shaped infinity-edged pool – perhaps Mr Abbey is religious – that is “just a few feet short of Olympic length.” It requires 350,000 gallons of water if it is to be filled to capacity. Adjoining this is something even more ludicrous: a 1,000,000 gallon, temperature-controlled rainbow trout pond that cost some $8,000,000 to construct. The pond is said to be “adorned with perennials,” is heated by a custom gravity separator with UV filters and is “chilled for the trout by a 300-tonne central cooling plant.” At Bradbury, thoughts of water crisis in Sudan and Ethiopia come way behind the needs of Abbey’s rainbows.
For those wanting to avoid California’s UV rays, Bradbury also boasts an acre of porches, decks, loggia and walkways. A 600ft blue stone driveway completes this “once in a lifetime trophy property” that “belongs in the portfolio of the most astute collector” and it has space for “60 foot truck access or multiple limousines.”
When Mr Abbey has tired of California, he is able to retreat to his own island in Montana. The 24 acre Shelter Island on Flathead Lake includes 7,000 feet of frontage to the water, a world class sporting clay course and 3 computer controlled tracks and docking systems that allow boats to be landed in the dry dock without riders ever leaving the craft or handling a line. The island is powered via an underground armoured utility cable that carry 12,000 amps to it along with CAT-5 computer cable and phonelines and the main entertaining space features a mammoth television of some 120-inches in size.
Abbey has built over 44,000 square foot of accommodation on his island. The main house has 5 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms. His “Great Room” features ceilings of some 45 foot in height and in addition to yet another indoor shooting range, there is a kitchen that woudn’t look out of place in The Savoy hotel.
In the UK, the property most similar to anything Abbey has built has to be Updown Court at Windlesham in Surrey. Developed by a former bricklayer named Leslie Allen-Vercoe, the house was described by him as being: “The most important residence to be built in England since the 19th century.” Architectural critics did not agree and some went as far as to say that it looked like: “A cross between a Tesco superstore and Center Parcs.”
Allen-Vercoe’s behemoth of a house is gargantuan in size. With 103 rooms it includes 24 bedrooms, 5 swimming pools, a 2-lane bowling alley, a squash court, a floodlit tennis court, a 50-seat cinema and a panic room. The heated driveway that led to the house is entirely made of marble and cost some £2.5 million to construct but plainly none of this appealed to the market as it languished for sale at a price of £70,000,000 from 2006 to 2011 before being repossessed by the Irish National Asset Management Agency (NAMA). Updown Court was sold for half the original asking price to a foreign buyer in October 2011 and is, I believe, due to undergo extensive remodeling.
Allen Vercoe once stated: “If Elton John were a house, he’d be Updown Court.” Equally, I imagine if Mr Abbey’s residences were to be compared to any celebrities they’d be the vulgar car crash that is Donatella Versace and the ludicrous money obsessed singer with a dollar sign in her name, Ke$ha.
Updown Court, Shelter Island and The Bradbury Estate all illustrate that money cannot buy you good taste. I suppose, though, that those who ultimately come to live in them will have plenty of space to choose how and where to enjoy their own form of misery.
For more information about Donald G. Abbey, go to: http://www.theabbeyco.com
For information on both The Bradbury Estate and Shelter Island, contact Bob Hurwitz of the Hurwitz James Company on +1 310-477-8865. Website: http://www.hurwitzjamesco.com
A website devoted to The Bradbury Estate can be viewed at: http://www.bradburyestate.com
A video of Shelter Island can be watched at: http://vimeo.com/11404637
For more details on Updown Court, go to: http://www.updowncourt.com/
The sale of a $25 million mansion modeled on Marie Antoinette’s favourite retreat that has connections to Levi Strauss & Co., Yehudi Menuhin, the Zodiac Killer and a controversial dot-com tycoon
Modeled on the Petit Trianon, a small château in the grounds of Versailles that was favoured by Louis XVI’s wife Marie Antoinette, the Koshland Mansion at 3800 Washington Street in Presidio Heights, San Francisco, California was built between 1902 and 1904 for a pioneer wool, hide and fur merchant named Marcus S. Koshland and his wife, Corrine.
The Koshlands, whose son Daniel (1920 – 2007) was to become a president of Levi Strauss & Co., commissioned an architect named Frank S. Van Tree to design a replica of the Petit Trianon after having admired it whilst on holiday in France. The front of the building, facing onto Washington Street, is considered such a faithful representation of the neoclassical building the Koshlands copied and as a result the house is now designated a San Francisco Designated Landmark.
Some 20,000 square foot in size and set on a 2/3rd acre plot, the completion of this sandstone faced “single family residence” was celebrated by the Koshland family with a Marie Antoinette themed ball in 1904. The invitations to this legendary event were purchased and printed in Paris and hand delivered to the guests.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake, just two years after they’d completed the building, somewhat interrupted the Koshlands hectic party schedule at 3800 Washington Street. Though the disaster caused the front columns and roof balustrade to collapse, the couple generously opened the otherwise undamaged property to some 60 to 80 displaced family and friends. With no mains water, the guests had to fetch water from Fort Mason but they were no doubt happy to have had somewhere to take refuge.
During subsequent renovations, as well as restoring the façade, a 5-car garage was added in 1909 and a greenhouse and extension in 1912. In the ensuing years, until her death in 1953, Corrine Koshland, better known as Cora, opened up 3800 Washington Street as a venue for concerts. A founder of the San Francisco Symphony Association and one of the first directors of the San Francisco Opera Company, Koshland invited music critics to review the performances and gave both Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern their musical debuts at the house as child prodigies. Amongst the other big names to play in the masnion were Igor Stravinsky, Jascha Heifitz and Leonard Bernstein.
In 1953, the Koshland Mansion was sold for $100,000 by the estate of Cora Koshland. The purchaser was Walter E. Buck (1884 – 1966), president of the American Distilling Company. Buck and his wife Emily, who were well known for “Gatsby-esque parties” at their 1,300 acre estate, Woodside, redecorated 3800 Washington Street by “painting the mahogany library white, removing the dark green, gold-tooled leather from the dining room and developing small card rooms in the basement.” It seems likely that the era of parties at 3800 Washington Street continued during their occupancy.
On 11th October 1969, a murder occurred on the block where 3800 Washington Street stands when the Zodiac Killer, a to this day unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the 1960s and 1970s, shot and killed a cab driver named Paul Stine. Stine had collected his passenger one block west of Union Square and had, as requested, driven him to the intersection of Washington and Maple Streets in Presidio Heights. Once there, the cab driver was shot once in the head with a 9mm before the killer, observed by three teenagers across the street, took his wallet and car keys. The Zodiac Killer tore off a section of Stine’s bloodstained shirt, wiped the cab clean and walked off into the night before the police could arrive.
Subsequently, on the 14th October 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle were mailed a swatch of Stine’s shirt to prove he was the killer and then on 9th November 1969, a 7-page letter followed. Excerpts from it were published from it in the newspaper on 12th November which revealed that a police officer, Don Fouke, who had responded to the teenager’s call, had actually encountered the killer for 5 to 10 seconds on a stairway of a house close to the murder scene. Fouke had been told to look for a black suspect and on seeing a white man going into the yard of a house, had discounted the individual and drove on. The Zodiac Killer, in his letter, detailed the encounter but claimed that two policemen had actually spoken with him 3-minutes after he’d shot Stine.
In 1975, a neighbour, Paul Renne purchased 3800 Washington Street for $675,000, supposedly to prevent it being acquired by property developers, but having been used as the 1982 San Francisco Decorator Showcase house, it was placed on the market and sold to a gallery owner named Heidi Betz and her business partner, an art collector named Charles Pankow. They paid $1.5 million for the house but failed in their bid to turn it into an art gallery due to objections from neighbouring residents.
In the two decades that followed 3800 Washington Street was sold several more times but finally it’s glory days looked set to return in 2007 when it was purchased by an “internet titan” named Halsey Minor and his second wife, Shannon. Having paid approximately $22 million for what essentially was going to be a very expensive renovation project, Minor supposedly assigned a further $15 million towards renovations and hired Michelle Obama’s favourite designer, Michael S. Smith, to oversee the project.
Minor founded CNET, a tech media website that published news, articles, blogs and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics, in 1992 after leaving Merrill Lynch and built it into one of the first internet companies to achieve profitability. CNET was sold for $1.8 billion in 2008 and is now CBS Interactive. Another of the companies he co-founded in 2000, salesforce.com, was “one of the most successful companies of the decade” and achieved a market capitalisation of in excess of $15 billion.
Having made a small fortune from his dot-com success, Minor diversified into investments that brought with them a lifestyle that would later be described as “a multi-millionaire who lived life as a billionaire.” In 2007, he began construction of a hotel in his hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia and announced this would be part of a series he’d open as part of the Minor Family Hotel group he planned. The hotel has never been completed.
In the same year, he also bought the Koshland Mansion and purchased 400 acres of land and a residence on the James River, the Carter’s Grove Plantation, for $15.3 million. Here, he planned a centre for thoroughbred horse breeding and at around the same time he attempted to buy both the Hialeah Park Race Track in Hialeah, Florida and the Pimlico Track in Baltimore. Both bids failed.
Minor’s investments were not just limited to property and the equine sector. In 2006, he placed a $3 million deposit on a $59 million Gulfstream G650 and at Sotheby’s in 2008, he was the winning bidder on a painting by Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom, at a hammer price of $9.6 million and also bought paintings by Andy Warhol and Childe Hassam.
Around this point, however, this dot-com tycoon’s fortune began to unravel when Merrill Lynch called in a $25 million loan and various legal suits connected to his art collection, investments and properties commenced. Several of his homes were repossessed and at a court hearing in August 2011, he claimed to have just $112,643 in cash and owned no publicly traded securities. Minor claimed to be majorly broke but the declaration did not cover illiquid assets such as art, real estate and shares in non-public companies. To this day, Minor remains listed in first place on the State of California’s Franchise Tax Board’s top 500 delinquent taxpayers owing some $10,455,580.69.
In response to his supposed progression from riches to rags, Minor wrote an article for The Huffington Post in July 2012 entitled “Why I Fight”:
“I often wonder what Thomas Jefferson would think of today’s America, a nation that is rapidly but silently abandoning the individual in favour of faceless corporations, rapacious banks and a collusive, unresponsive government… The simple answer is that someone must [fight] or we will emerge from this recession with wealth and power concentrated in a few tiny financial institutions representing a new ruling elite, not unlike the one that inspired Thomas Jefferson’s generation to revolution.”
Somehow, in spite of his changed circumstances, Minor has managed to hold on to 3800 Washington Street. Though, during his tenure, the house has fallen into decline and is now half covered in ivy, it is still one of San Francisco’s finest properties and it is still situated in one of the city’s best neighbourhoods. It is still an asset of considerable value and Minor’s decision to sell may well help him rake back some of what he has lost.
Steven Mavromihalis of Pacific Union International launched 3800 Washington Street onto the market in May 2012 for $25,000,000. This move came just after two Abandoned Building Notices had been issued on the property by the City and County of San Francisco Department of Building Inspection. On offer is the 18,000 square foot main house at 3800 Washington Street, a 2,600 square foot 3-bedroom house at 3810 Washington Street and a vacant lot at 125 Maple Street. Though the agents don’t give much more in the way of details, they do refer to the house having a double marble Palladian staircase, 22 rooms, a “spectacular ballroom,” 8 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, 9 fireplaces, 3 kitchens, an elevator and three original stained glass windows by the San Francisco poet, writer sculptor and artist Bruce Porter (1865 – 1964).
According to the agents, 3800 Washington Street is second only to Danielle Steele’s 55-room residence, The Spreckels Mansion, at 2080 Washington Street in the rankings of the largest homes in San Francisco. This is most certainly a mansion with a fair few tales to tell but whoever buys it will need both Steele’s wealth and imagination to get it back into good order. Dot-com tycoons and serial killers need not apply.
Read more about the Zodiac Killer at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac_Killer
A profile of Daniel E. Koshland, Jr. is available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_E._Koshland,_Jr.
Read more about the downfall of Halsey Minor at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154564/Halsey-Minor-tech-guru-files-bankruptcy-ruined-Carters-Grove-estate.html
All enquiries about 3800 Washington Street, Presidio Heights, San Francisco, California, CA 94118 should be directed to Steven Mavromihalis of Pacific Union International on +1 (415) 345 3030 or email him at: [email protected].
More details are available at: http://www.pacunion.com/homes/CA/San_Francisco/94118/3800__Washington_St/AGT-107397278-685992/ whilst a video tour of the property can be viewed at: http://vimeo.com/42775765
The Steeple Times asks Trevor Abrahmsohn, the founder and managing director of Glentree Estates: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom.” What’s your guiding force?
Knowledge and charm.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
The ninth ‘no’ is a precursor to yes!
Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2012?
Vince Cable.
Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?
Making money more easily.
What might you swap all your wealth for?
Good health if mine were failing.
Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank.” What’s your view on the banking crisis?
An accident that was waiting to happen. No surprise there.
What phrase or word do you most loathe?
‘Elf’ and Safety!
In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home.” What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?
A multiplicity of good causes with a significant percentage of our turnover donated to children’s cancer charities, Make A Wish Foundation and Jewish Care.
The judge in “Law Abiding Citizen” states: “I can pretty do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?
They are one of the most important building blocks in the post Thatcher liberated society and are responsible for the explosion of the service industry amongst others. It is one of the most important innovations for both business and pleasure.
If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?
Peter Ustinov, Frank Sinatra, Stephen Hawkins, Margaret Thatcher, John Barry, Ernie Bilko and Arthur Lowe.
If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?
A mighty New York strip steak with Idaho potato and salad in Palm Beach, Florida, looking at the sea.
What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?
7.30pm.
A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?
A Martini.
Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?
The fun and informal ones with lots of laughter and cheer.
Who is the most positive person you know?
My wife and mother.
What’s your most guilty pleasure?
Too much good food.
If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?
99% good 1% bad!
If you were a car, what marque would you be?
A classic Aston Martin.
Cilla Black presented “Surprise, Surprise.” Tell us the most surprising thing about you.
My 14 handicap.
What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?
A father’s day card from my children.
Trevor Abrahmsohn is best known for selling “trophy” homes and has dealt with the majority of the sales on London’s “Billionaire’s Row,” The Bishop’s Avenue. His firm, Glentree Estates, is situated at 698 Finchley Road, London, NW11 7NE. Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8458 7311. Website: http://www.glentree.co.uk
This property developer tried to sell Britain’s ugliest crib, Updown Court at Windlesham in Surrey, for £70 million in 2008. It languished on the market for years and looked like a cross between a Tesco store and Center Parcs. The mansion included five swimming pools, a heated marble driveway and 103 rooms. Nobody loved it but after it was repossessed in 2011, it was finally sold on for £35 million. Meanwhile, Allen-Vercoe appeared in the dock at Southwark Crown Court in 2012 in relation to a case involving the £10 million mortgage fraudster Joanne Sarah Pier (also known as Zoe May Fletcher and Maria Micheala). He was cleared.