..The owner is Shirley Goldfield
champdor.ebby.com
CHATEAU on the Range / It'sFrench-inspired. It's near Dallas. It's
spectacularin price and grandeur. And it's for sale by ownerswho always
wanted a home like this - until they gotit
By CLAUDIA FELDMAN
Staff
It's a five-minute drive from Interstate 35 in Denton County, past the movie
theater, the Chili's and the mobile home park, to the Goldfield mansion.
Presented with the right combination of words - appointment, Mrs. Goldfield,
newspaper - the guard at the foot of the driveway presses a button and opens
the massive gate.
Another few minutes - the front door is still a block away - and Shirley
Goldfield is standing in the doorway.
She lives in one of the bigger houses in the world. The mansion she named
Champ d'Or or House of Gold is 48,000 square feet.
She also lives in one of the more expensive houses in the world. She thinks
her interpretation of a 17th-century French chateau is worth $45 million.
And she wants out.
About a year ago, after dreaming about the house for 10 years, helping to
build it for five years and actually living in it for two months, she
decided to sell.
It's not because of bankruptcy or divorce, says Goldfield, settling into a
French antique chair in the library. She's wearing a white ruffled shirt,
black slacks and black and white backless pumps. She looks fresh, not overly
made up, Southern, like a magnolia blossom.
According to one newspaper story, Goldfield and her husband, Alan, decided
to sell because they lay in bed at night arguing over which one would make
the incredibly long trek to the kitchen to get the Haagen-Dazs.
Absolutely not true, she says.
Someone else quoted her in print saying some dreams are best left
unexplored.
Not exactly true either, she says.
Turns out there are a hodgepodge of reasons.
One is that they've outgrown the house.
Or, more accurately, they've had a lifestyle shift and don't need it.
Of course, they didn't ever really need it, but when they started
construction in 1997, Alan Goldfield was CEO of CellStar Corp., one of the
largest distributors of cell phones in the world. At the time, a big, formal
showcase for entertaining sounded like a good idea. Now he's retired, and
though they do still entertain, it's on a smaller, more informal scale.
Now they'd rather travel or hang with a few old friends than host power
parties.
Goldfield, still struggling to explain, compares the house to a painting.
She wanted to paint a painting, she did it and now she's done, she says.
And she is a private person, and it's nearly impossible to live privately in
that house.
Perhaps she was naive, even ridiculous to think she could build a house of
such size and grandeur just 30 minutes north of Dallas, and nobody would
notice.
But that's what she thought.
"There was a lot of interest I didn't expect," says Goldfield, 52. "And
there's been the jealousy factor. At first I didn't understand, because I'm
the first to see someone dressed nice and say, `How beautiful you look.' Or
to see someone succeed and be so pleased for them."
What stings the most is the recurring suggestion that Goldfield squandered
millions on the house and luxurious touches - there are warming drawers for
towels and chilled drawers for those extra heads of lettuce, for example -
when the money might have been spent to help people in need.
Even if Goldfield isn't interested in charity, critics say, it's just dumb
to spend $45 million on a house.
In self-defense, Goldfield says she and Alan give away lots of money to
worthy causes. They don't brag about it, but they take their philanthropic
responsibilities seriously.
Still, she hates to be viewed as selfish or tacky or foolishly extravagant.
"I don't want to be a bad steward of God's money," she says. "I firmly
believe that God has given me everything that I have, and I need to give
back as much as I possibly can."
When the Goldfields have parties at the house these days, it is usually to
raise funds for local charities. Three of her favorites are PediPlace, which
offers free medical care to young patients in need; the Denton County
Children's Advocacy Center, which helps abused kids; and the Denton State
School, which serves children and adults with mental retardation.
Goldfield agrees to interviews on two conditions: She, her husband and other
family members are not to be photographed - their four grown sons are not
even to be named - and interviewers must focus their questions on the house.
Dutifully, she offers a tour that moves from a living room or grand salon
filled with French antiques to a painted dome 78 feet high to a tea room
modeled after a New York restaurant, Tavern on the Green, to the kitchen
with three dishwashers.
One, she explains, is for wine glasses only.
She moves through the master bedroom, perhaps the most lived-in room in the
house, and gestures toward photos of her children, grandchildren and Alan.
They've been married 31 years.
"He's such a handsome man," she murmurs.
Against one wall is a large portrait of Goldfield in a light pink wedding
gown. She looks young, beautiful, certainly bridelike, but the photo really
was taken in Denton, 20 years after their courthouse wedding.
Alan had seemed so regretful that she never had a wedding dress or a church
ceremony that she decided to buy a gown, pose for a photograph and give it
to him one Christmas.
Her own regret now is that Alan never saw her in full regalia. She arranged
the photo session as a surprise, then had the dress cleaned and packed away
for safekeeping.
She frowns. She went too far with the gift or she didn't go far enough,
she's not sure which. She continues on the tour through a king-size
his-and-her bathroom. She moves toward his sink, reaches into a drawer and
pushes a button on a remote control. A TV screen appears in the middle of
his mirror.
She jokes, "Alan can watch the stock-market report in the morning and slit
his throat."
She glides on, past the indoor pool, past the wet steam room, past a
two-story, Chanel-inspired "closet." Then she's climbing stairs, on her way
to the theater on the second floor and the ballroom on the third. In
addition to the ballroom, there's a third-floor catering kitchen and
restrooms for men and women. She likes it that the women's powder room has
two toilets.
There also are two elevators. She steps into one and moves swiftly to the
ground floor. More powder rooms. A room devoted solely to gift-wrapping (the
drawer pulls are shaped like bows). There's a two-lane bowling alley with
computerized scoring; a racquetball court; a wine cellar; a laundry room
with a commercial washer, dryer and sheet press; and a 15-car garage.
There are only four parked at the moment - two Mercedeses, which belong to
her, and a Model-T and a Rolls Royce, which belong to him.
"His toys," she says.
Goldfield says she wants $45 million for the house, not a penny less, but
she won't say how much it cost to build.
One figure bandied about is $12 million.
"That's very, very conservative," she says.
Denton County records show the house is appraised for $13.8 million. That
figure leaves out the 140 acres surrounding the mansion and 110 acres and at
least four houses on the family ranch across the road.
The Goldfields lived in one of the houses while the mansion was going up.
The other homes are occupied by three of the sons, a daughter-in-law and a
grandson. The eldest, Alan's son from a previous marriage, lives in the
Houston area with his wife and two daughters.
"They're precious," she says, and points to photographs.
Goldfield is in the two-story library when she relents and offers a few
background tidbits. She grew up Shirley Abernathy in Jewett in Leon County.
Her dad was a farmer, and when he died in middle age, his wife and three
kids were hard-pressed to put food on the table.
To help support the brood, Shirley's mom worked as a seamstress, and Shirley
delivered sodas and sundaes and banana splits at the local drive-in. Back
then, there was precious little money for clothes and school supplies and no
money for frills. College, as it turned out, was a frill.
By 21, she was working as a secretary in Dallas, and she met Alan when she
walked into his record-and-tape store.
He was a native Houstonian, a hardworking grocer's son, an aspiring baseball
player who hurt his pitching arm in the minor leagues.
When Alan and Shirley met, he was 28, divorced, full of big ideas. Within
three months they were married.
It was a case, Goldfield says, of opposites attracting.
"We had nothing in common - absolutely nothing. I think I'm the typical
Southern belle. Everything has to be right and perfect. He is totally honest
to the point of annoying. If he doesn't like something, he'll tell you.
Like, `That dress looks horrid on you.'
"But he's also very focused. He thinks on a grand scale. And that's why,
even now, we don't put limitations on our dreams.' "
Early in their marriage, Alan's tape-and-record store morphed into National
Auto Center, which became the parent company for CellStar. He made some
brilliant business moves, positioning himself to grow with a cell-phone
industry about to explode.
For a few years, the Goldfields stayed in Dallas, then moved to Denton. They
wanted a small-town upbringing for their kids, a safe place that Shirley
could navigate alone when Alan was out of town on business.
The Goldfields were still in Denton when Shirley first started talking about
her dream house. She was a history buff and a Francophile, and she fell in
love with Vaux-le-Vicomte, built outside Paris by Louis XIV's finance
minister.
What she wanted, she thought, was her own version of the chateau in the
Texas countryside.
In the mid-'90s, Alan sold some CellStar stock, put the money in a special
account, and gave Shirley the account number.
"Go build your dream house," he said. "It's paid for."
One of the first people she contacted to work on the project was Sterling
Kenty, an architect and builder in Dallas.
He was glad to build the house but he didn't want to design it, he told
Goldfield. "I like to be outside better than in."
Next she found an architect, J. Terry Bates, who lives and works in
Nashville. He'd already designed some houses that Goldfield admired, and she
flew to Tennessee to meet with him.
"He thought I was looney-tunes, but I said, `please, come see the land.' "
Her third soul mate on the project was Dallas interior designer David
Corley.
"Your job," she told him, "is to keep me from getting gaudy."
Rarely did any member of the trio meet with Alan. The house was Shirley's
baby, and he was usually out of town on business. He did say, however, he
wanted a wet steam room. And once he visited with the architect. "Bigger,
bigger, bigger," was the executive's advice.
"The house is too big because of that," Shirley says, trying to laugh but
really wincing. "Why did we listen to him? He didn't know how big it was
going to turn out, either."
Bates, Kenty and Corley remember the years spent working with Goldfield
fondly. She respected their opinions and judgment. She loved their work and
work ethic. Kenty actually threw in some work for free. Probably they all
did.
"I tried to give as much as or more than I took," Kenty says. "I don't
believe in gouging people."
Kenty and Corley respect Goldfield's decision to sell, but they wish she
would give herself a little more time to get used to the space. It's hard
for them to imagine anybody else living there.
"I won't be a bit surprised if she doesn't start to bond with it," Kenty
says. "Moneywise, she definitely does not need to sell."
Bates doubts Goldfield is going to change her mind. And he's not sure she
should.
"It wasn't a quick decision to sell; it was something she started realizing
and working out two years before the house was finished. She told me, `It's
a great house to entertain and do business in. But I don't even want to be
that kind of busy. We want to relax and enjoy ourselves.' "
Goldfield talks longingly about moving across the road - back to the home
she and Alan lived in as the mansion was under construction. Bates designed
it, Kenty built it and Corley furnished it, so it is full of their magical
touches. It's also gigantic, 18,000 square feet, but not big enough to
attract much attention. It fits relatively simply into the Texas landscape.
Goldfield made her first call to Dallas real estate broker Joan Eleazer in
August 2002, just as Alan was leaving on a trip to China. If it weren't for
responsibilities associated with the house, she would have been able to go
with him.
"I was really depressed," Goldfield remembers.
Today, Eleazer says she is well into her international search for a
qualified buyer. Thus far, she's had a couple of lookers, one from the
Dallas area and one from Canada.
"I don't show the house to anybody who calls," Eleazer says. "I have to have
proof they are who they say they are, and they have funds."
Eleazer acknowledges that there aren't many people in the world with the
bucks required to buy the house.
Wherever those special customers are, however, she is determined to find
them.
Eleazer, vice president of Briggs Freeman Real Estate Brokerage, was her
company's top sales producer in 1999, 2000 and 2001. She's sold scores of
houses in the Dallas area, and she plans to sell the Goldfield mansion, too.
Naturally, neighbors do talk about the house.
"It's beautiful," says Robert Garcia, the friendly clerk in the wine and
beer department at the local Albertson's.
Not so, says Betsy Boydstun, loading ice, groceries and her grandson into
her hot car in the parking lot.
"If I had $45 million, I would not buy a house. . . . I think we have to
take care of America and Americans. We have elderly people eating dog food.
We have moms and dads who can't afford to take their kids to get their teeth
fixed."
Boydstun shakes her head and drives away before her grandson melts and the
ice does, too.
At the mobile home park, Lorrie Jones says she probably wouldn't buy the
Goldfield mansion if she had the money, either. If she were rich, says the
housekeeping supervisor who's enjoying a precious day off, she might stay in
her comfortable mobile home, vacation in Cancun and expand her efforts to
rescue the wild cats in the neighborhood.
"I've lived here three years," she says. "I've found homes for 17 cats."
She turns in the direction of the Goldfields and says, almost to herself,
"It's a big-ass house."
At Chili's, waitress Shanber Laymance says she absolutely would buy the
mansion if she had $45 million.
"It's an awesome house," says the 19-year-old, who's been known to park
outside the gates and just stare. "It gives everybody in the community
something to admire and reach for."
Laymance is working to save money for college, and she plans to major in
business and computers. She dreams, she says, of becoming the chief
executive officer of a major corporation.
She flashes a smile full of hope and optimism, then returns to the job at
hand, which is picking up dirty dishes.
..........
HOUSE OF GOLD
Alan and Shirley Goldfield are trying to sell their year-old, Dallas-area
mansion for $45 million. Some of the features that they think make it worth
the staggering price:
48,000 square feet
a dome in the center of the house that is 78 feet from floor to ceiling
a two-story, mahogany-paneled library
a tea room patterned after the Tavern on the Green restaurant in New York
a kitchen with three dishwashers, a Sub-Zero refrigerator and freezer, and
six refrigerated drawers
a garden room across the back of the house with a wall of windows that may
be fully opened or closed
two elevators
draperies in the master suite that are operated electronically
a wet steam room
drawers that warm towels in the master bath
a TV screen that pops out of one of the mirrors in the master bath
indoor and outdoor pools
an exercise room
a theater, complete with lobby and a place to insert a popcorn machine
guest suites with kitchens and living rooms
a ballroom
a caterer's kitchen next to the ballroom
a gift-wrap room
a two-lane bowling alley with computerized scoring
a racquetball court
a laundry room with a commercial washer, dryer and sheet press
a 15-car garage |
