Staffing considerations for new homebuilders...
Terry Allen Kramer, a Broadway producer, spends five months a year in her new 44,000-square-foot oceanfront home in Palm Beach. ''I never think anything is too big -- until you have to staff it,'' she says.
The house, where she has a staff of six, is in ''perfect proportion'' to the neighborhood, Mrs. Kramer said in an interview in her New York office as her Shih Tzu dog napped on her lap.
Americans Thrive in Boom Times
Filed at 12:08 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
NEW CANAAN, Conn. (AP)-- Scott Hobbs, building contractor for the ultra-rich, crosses a muddy construction site and pulls open a plywood box marked ''Fragile.''
Inside is a 5,000-pound, antique bathtub carved from a single block of Carrara marble. Hobbs will set it in the master bath of a $7 million house in this leafy Connecticut town. It's a bathtub for the new Gilded Age.
No one's prospered more from this country's nine-year economic boom and roaring stock market than the wealthy.
By almost any count, the well-to-do are flush with cash, and the very well-to-do have multiplied their fortunes. The number of American households worth $1 million or more jumped 37 percent to 4.1 million since 1995. Those with $10 million or more rose 45 percent, to 275,000.
A 150-foot yacht, once a head-turner, barely merits a glance as it sails through St. Tropez. Million-dollar weddings, with guests flown in on private jets, keep party planners busy. Hermes' most popular handbag sells out in less than a day, at $4,200 and up apiece.
Then, there's the bathtub. Rare, beautiful and probably for the owners' eyes only. Such one-of-a-kind luxuries are exactly what those at the very top of the boom seek to quietly set them apart.
Computer billionaire Paul Allen ordered a recording studio -- for his yacht. Julie Taubman served ''pommes frites'' -- french fries -- and margaritas when she married the son of shopping mall magnate Alfred Taubman this summer.
''Most of our clients do want to be different,'' says Scott Hobbs, president of his family's contracting business. ''We're not building the same house over and over again. They want something that's personalized.''
He re-covers the bathtub, tucked in a corner of the five-car garage, and steps into the shell of the 20,000-square-foot hilltop house where nearly 50 workmen are toiling.
Saws whine nearby as he skims through a thick book of plans for the 18-month project, a family home for a 40-ish couple and their three children. Hobbs points out plans for the billiard room, home theater, and wine cellar. The husband and wife, who refused to be interviewed to safeguard their privacy, will have matching 16- x 12-foot walk-in closets.
Just five years ago, Hobbs was building 5,000-square-foot houses. Now his average house is double that, and many more clients choose only the best materials: $1,000 door hinges, $10,000 gold-plated faucets and custom-made cabinets even in the laundry room.
Not since the early 20th century has the country experienced such mansion-building. Today's grandest houses rival the great Vanderbilt and Astor homes of the first Gilded Age, a century ago.
The Palm Beach mansions designed by architect Jeffery Smith average 20,000 square feet, and in recent years, nearly 20 homes built in that region range from 23,000 to 64,000 square feet. Bill Gates' well-publicized house near Medina, Wash., spans 40,000 square feet -- about two-thirds the size of a football field.
Terry Allen Kramer, a Broadway producer, spends five months a year in her new 44,000-square-foot oceanfront home in Palm Beach. ''I never think anything is too big -- until you have to staff it,'' she says.
The house, where she has a staff of six, is in ''perfect proportion'' to the neighborhood, Mrs. Kramer said in an interview in her New York office as her Shih Tzu dog napped on her lap.
Off in Sturgeon Bay, Wis., custom yacht builder Palmer Johnson is building six yachts ranging from 115 feet to 165 feet. Commonly used just a few weeks a year, such yachts cost up to $2 million annually just for upkeep and crew.
''The good old days are now,'' company president Mike Kelsey says with a chuckle. ''We're enjoying it while it lasts.''
Mega-yachts and mega-mansions, of course, are still as rare as the multi-million dollar bonuses that top CEOs earn or the stock market payouts that Internet startups have been reaping. But farther down the economic pecking order, fortunes are also fatter.
The top 20 percent of American households -- about 54 million people -- saw their income rise nearly 40 percent to an average $102,000 in the last two decades, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office. In contrast, the lowest 20 percent of households saw after-tax income fall 12 percent to $8,800. (The average American household earns about $47,400.)
That means millions of people have millions to spend, and they do, particularly for luxuries.
Last year, 16 percent of new homes were 3,000 square feet or larger -- more than double the number in 1986, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Sales of boats longer than 24 feet rose 40 percent in the last two years to $1.7 billion. Their average price? $250,000.
Down feathers, hand-harvested from the nests of Icelandic Eider ducks, fill The Company Store's new limited edition $2,300 pillow. That's right, a bed pillow. More than a dozen have been sold so far, says vice president of manufacturing David Pipkorn.
''There's a real cachet in a product that's very rare and hard to come by,'' he says. ''Maybe it's an investment.''
Yet The Company Store is no exclusive boutique. It's a bedding catalog, savvy enough to move into the booming mass market for luxuries for the rich -- and the wannabes.
Some buyers of Hermes' hot-selling Kelly handbag -- named after movie star Grace Kelly -- save up for the purchase, says company spokeswoman Marina Luri. ''The thing they have in common is that they aspire to one,'' she says.
The most recent shipment of four Kelly bags sold out at the company's New York store in less than two hours.
But when Martha Stewart peddles her wares at Kmart, and middle-class women buy Fendi bags, the elite don't feel quite so elite. ''It creates the problem for them of distinguishing themselves,'' says Harvard economist Juliet Schor, author of ''The Overspent American.''
Muffie Potter Aston agrees. A New York socialite married to a top plastic surgeon, she's also an executive at upper-crust jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels.
''Fendi, Prada and Tiffany are everywhere,'' says Mrs. Aston, in an interview in a private room of the jeweler's Fifth Avenue salon. ''There's a certain snob appeal to knowing you have the most finely crafted boat or handbag.''
Removing a $370,000 diamond and ruby brooch from a wall case, Mrs. Aston emphasizes the craftsmanship of the settings. Customers no longer demand the largest, most glittering gems, as they did in the 1980s, she says. ''Tastes have changed.''
Showy is out. And so is precedent -- an exciting trend for book dealer Kenneth Rendell, who fills libraries for Bill Gates, among other luminaries.
Many of his clients today don't fill their libraries with proper proportions of Ernest Hemingway and Charles Dickens. Sometimes, they don't even fill them with books. One recent client preferred a library devoted to aviation-related letters and manuscripts.
''A large number of my clients got where they are by being individuals, and they come to collecting with ideas,'' says Rendell. ''There's no sense of caring about what other people think or have done.''
Individual tastes also keep New York party planner Polly Onet busy. Her clients, including Julie Taubman, want one-of-a-kind celebrations -- a tough order when society guests have seen it all, says Onet.
''It takes more imagination and planning to get it to the point where people are walking away saying 'Wow!','' she says.
Still, in the pursuit of the artful, competition also comes into play. No matter how tasteful, mansions and mega-yachts do make statements, sometimes rubbing others the wrong way.
''They move here with one or two kids and build a 10- or 12-bedroom palace,'' says John Moffly IV, editor of the glossy monthly Greenwich Magazine. ''It's absolutely overbuilding in terms of need.''
He's discussing the furor in Greenwich, Conn., a wealthy suburb near New Canaan, over new mansions, especially those built on small lots. The same battle is brewing in many suburbs nationwide, fueled by the same issue: new money.
Greenwich town officials passed a law in December reducing the house size allowed on most lots and restricting the size of homes on 2- and 4-acre parcels for the first time. A few residents are fighting back with a lawsuit.
''Essentially what they're trying to do is stop the town from changing,'' businessman Al Small, who's leading the lawsuit, says over coffee at the Greenwich Starbucks one morning.
Five years ago, he bought a ranch house, tore it down and built a slightly larger house -- something he feels others should have the right to do.
But local realtor David Ogilvy says mansion-builders can't always do as they please. ''Some people forget that the town is a patchwork that fits together,'' he says. Too many people ''build as though they're the only house on the street.''
Far from this fray, 83-year-old Eileen Slocum pauses by an ancestor's portrait in her mansion in Newport, R.I. She's considering whether a new Gilded Age has changed her world of beach and yacht clubs, servants and impeccable manners.
Yes, new families come. New fortunes are made. But mostly only those with old connections join Newport society, she gently explains. Even new things don't have currency in her circles. Her friends are too busy preserving the old.
''The idea is to hold on to them now and maintain them and keep them recovered,'' she says. ''I don't see much acceptance of the modern and ultramodern.''
In New York, Muffie Potter Aston voices a different worry about a world where change and new things do hold sway.
''People have gotten spoiled when the best is available in so many places,'' she says. ''The scary part of the economy being so good so long is that people are such collectors they don't even notice what they have anymore.''
Scott Hobbs sees that, too. He looks at photos of the mansions he's built and their finely crafted interiors.
''People get used to having things. Once you have an exercise room, you can't go back,'' he muses. ''Well, you can but ... you don't want to.'' |
