Inside a Florida car condo, which includes a ground floor area that can hold five of the owner’s 20 cars at a time
2 min
Suzanne Lovell, a Chicago-based designer, had already worked with her clients—who are in their late 50s and work in the boating industry—on a condo in Chicago and a 15,000-square-foot penthouse in Naples, Fla., when the husband called with a special request. “He had just purchased a car condo about 5 miles from their Naples residence,” Lovell says. “And he asked me to design the coolest man cave ever.”
The car condo is in a gated community, but instead of front doors, there are garage doors. The units don’t have bedrooms. Instead, there is generous space for cars and for entertaining—complete with bathrooms and wet bars—making a car condo the perfect place to host a Formula One viewing party. The double unit, which the couple bought in 2021 and would cost about $3 million in today’s market, is about 3,400 square feet. The second-floor entertaining space overlooks the ground floor, which has space for five of the owner’s 20 cars, including a 1957 Porsche Speedster, a 1962 Ferrari 250GT and a 1961 Facel Vega. Along with multiple seating areas, the entertainment floor also has a race simulator and a room for the owner’s custom slot car track. The couple spent about $1.2 million to outfit the space. Cars not included!
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Following the successful launch of its Palais Collection, MAISON de SABRÉ has unveiled a new modular handbag system offering more than 720 styling combinations.
The imposing stone structures, with towers, turrets and a hot tub room, lord over the landscape near the mountain resort town of Sandpoint.
2 min
Idaho is not a place that’s often associated with Medieval castles, but a pair have just hit the market for $6.25 million.
The imposing stone structures have towers, turrets, ramparts, arrow-slit windows and even a drawbridge, and might just be the most authentic-looking castles this side of the Atlantic.
“Who expects to see a castle like this in Idaho?” said listing agent Brenda Burk of Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty, who brought the property to the market last week. They are, she said, “extremely unusual.”
Schweitzer Castle and Château de Melusine, as they’re known, stand within Schweitzer Mountain Resort in the Selkirk Mountains and overlook the nearby mountain resort town of Sandpoint. They take in panoramic views of Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho’s largest lake.
The pair of ski-in/ski-out homes each have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and three stories, Burk explained. They are “so authentic,” she said. “Every single stone was handlaid.”
Schweitzer Castle, she said, wasn’t built for “functionality,” but has been modernized and adapted and now has everything a 21st-century residence requires, along with a dungeon, which for some buyers may also be a requisite.
The chateau, meanwhile, has a hot tub room with mountain views, as well as a garage.
The property is being sold furnished, and will come complete with the hand-carved statues, armor, mounted swords, stained-glass windows and a host of antiques dating to the 15th and 16th centuries.
The owner, an antique collector who couldn’t be reached for comment, “is always looking for that hidden jewel and he found that here,” Burk said.
The next custodian is likely to stem from a varied pool of buyers, Burk said, that would include “the trophy-home buyer, someone who can say ‘I own a castle.’”
The property could also appeal to someone looking for a vacation home, or a multi-generational estate, and beyond that “there’s the dreamers,” she said. “We definitely try to market to people who like Medieval history or maybe do Renaissance fairs.”
The seller “really wants it to go to someone with the same passion.”
