Columnists
Includes Maharaja suite
Looking for new accommodations? Got $65 million to spend? Want a little more space than usual —say about 47,000 square feet on 10 acres in east Oakville?
If you were to guess that this mansion must belong to some well-to-do former corporate executive, you would be right. According to a report in The Globe and Mail, the house is currently owned and occupied by Hugo Powell, a former CEO of Labatt Breweries and its parent, Interbrew SA. Powell retired in 2002 and finished building the house in 2006. It was built in the Jacobean style of Blickling Hall in Norfolk, England, which Mr. Powell often visited as a child.
Let’s get a few superlatives out of the way. The house, which cost $50 million to build, is named Chelster Hall, after the family’s two deceased golden retrievers, Lady Chelsea and Manchester. It has a domed ceiling in the foyer that was torn down and redone three times before it was completed to the owner’s satisfaction. There are six bedrooms (with names for the guest bedrooms, such as the Maharaja Suite, the Tuscany Suite and the Magic Kingdom), and 12 bathrooms (I guess by the time you travel from one end of the house to another, you need a certain number of strategically placed bathrooms). There is a two-storey library that holds 4,000 books, an indoor pool, a wine bar that replicates the wine bar in the George V hotel in Paris, as well as a bowling alley, home theatre, wine cellar that can store 7,000 bottles (that’s almost two bottles per book), underground parking for 12 cars and guest apartment. The grounds contain a swimming pool, tennis court, chapel, lakeside pavilion and a gatehouse guarding a double set of entrance gates. Taxes are $285,000 and annual upkeep costs are $484,000.
Yes, it sounds over the top. But Mr. Powell is a selfmade man who has earned his wealth, and I don’t want to be seen as one of those people who take jealous potshots from the cheap seats. Besides, think of all the people for whom the project has provided work, such as the 12 people it took to carry in the iron spiral staircase that links the lower and upper levels of the library.
So why is he selling after living in the house for only 10 years? The article tells us he originally selected the site for the house because it was near a private school that his young daughter was to attend. Now, however, she has grown up and attends university. As a result, Mr. Powell and his wife find the house “too large,” spending 90 per cent of their time in the combined kitchen and family room when they aren’t “pursuing their own interests outside the home.” It’s hard to imagine that the possibility of looming empy nest syndrome didn’t strike the Powells when they were having the place built to such gargantuan proportions. But still, in a perverse way, it’s comforting to know that maybe the rich aren’t much different from you and me in finding their houses empty after a child leaves home.
What would bother me, if I were wearing Mr. Powell’s shoes, is that I had fallen out of love so quickly with an idyllic ultra-monster-sized property that took me four years to construct, that involved a “great deal of bargaining with neighbouring property owners and town planners,” and that I had designed to endure for centuries. (“It was meant to look 100 years old the day it was built and 400 years from now, it will still look 100 years old,” says Mr. Powell.) So isn’t he worried that the house will become known as “Powell’s Folly?” If you were to take the newspaper article at face value, it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. He waxes philosophical about the fact that long-lived buildings have chapters, and he imagines that a future owner will find inspiration from Chelster Hall to create a new one—perhaps as a private school or corporate retreat. Maybe, if they have the ability to think in those terms, the very rich are a little different from you and me.
Besides, if he recovers something close to his $65 milllion asking price, Mr. Powell may not take much of a bath. And $65 million, even after real estate commission, should afford him a fighting chance to snap up a not-too-large waterfront property in Wellington; or purchase in Wellington on the Lake, so as to have a little pocket money left over to try each one of our many ice cream parlours.
What was the name of that guest bedroom again? The Maharaja Suite? And are those 4,000 books and 7,000 bottles of wine included? Maybe I should throw together a low-ball offer. You never know.
Comments (0)