Jackson, Wyo. – Ah, the West. Vast expanses of seemingly endless space reaching toward the horizon. Unconfined views. The feeling of being somewhere so grand and so gigantic that it boggles the mind. A place that rolls on and on, stretching out as far as the eye can see.
And that’s just the living room.
They are the mega-homes, stunning houses of monstrous size that dot the Western landscape from this once-rugged cow town at the base of the Teton Mountains down into the ski meccas of Colorado. Homes that stretch the imagination and the architect’s supply of ink to the breaking point, dwellings of 10,000, 15,000 and 20,000 square feet.
And then there’s the home of a former Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz. Or as he’s known in Aspen: the guy with the really big house. The prince’s home measures a staggering 55,000 square feet.
You could call it the Taj Mahal, but that would be unfair to the prince. The Taj Mahal is only 34,596 square feet. The Aspen home of the Saudi prince is the same size as the White House.
Today, Pitkin County is sending a message that is reverberating off the hills of Aspen and all the way into a lot of 1,800-square-foot pantries and 1,500-square-foot mudrooms: Enough is enough.
“It’s time, said Pitkin County Commissioner Jack Hatfield, “to draw a line in the sand.”
The proposal by the commissioners: No new home in or around Aspen could exceed 15,000 square feet.
Not much of a limit
Which makes University of Colorado planning and design professor Tom Clark stifle a chuckle.
“For one house,” Clark said, “15,000 square feet doesn’t seem like much of a limit.”
Clark has spent a lifetime probing the meaning and the consequences of these Garage Mahals. As an undergrad at Brown University, he said he was drawn on many weekends to the mansions along the beach in Newport, R.I.
“One day I stopped at the Vanderbilt Mansion and climbed over the fence,” the professor said. “It must have been curiosity.”
The curiosity never died. Clark’s focus moved from the old-money East Coast mansions of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers to the newer trend of mega-homes built by new money in the Rocky Mountain West. He’s writing a book, “Mountain Resort Planning and Development in an Era of Globalization.”
It’s about rich people and their trophy homes, often second or third homes that are unoccupied for much of the year.
“They are,” Clark said, “homes that are beyond function. The phrase is conspicuous consumption. With today’s monster homes, the extreme homes, the symbolism is important. They reveal something very important about American culture, that we both respect and resent wealth.”
Another battle in the living- room-the- size-of-Rhode-Island skirmish is playing out in the small yet stunningly wealthy Wyoming enclave of Jackson.
Teton County, Wyo., has, since 1994, restricted homes to 10,000 square feet of living space – 8,000 square feet of “habitable living space” and a 2,000 square-foot garage. In 1998, Australian Thomas Crow, founder of Cobra Golf equipment, finished building a 10,000-square-foot home that met those restrictions.
But a month after Crow and his wife, Cally, moved in, contractors began work, without any building permits, that added 3,000 square feet of living space within the massive structure. (They added second floors inside the home and the garage, both of which had 30-foot cathedral ceilings.)
The county fined the Crows $363,000 for the renovation. But that wasn’t the end of it.
“We want them to also be required to abate, or remove, all of the new work,” said Jim Radda, Teton County deputy attorney.
From Crow’s affidavit filed with that court: “We knew we would have to compete for our children’s and our grandchildren’s time, so we wanted to build a home where they would want to come and bring their friends. We felt the need to make a place that would be so attractive that other demands on their time would be overcome. Our approach has worked. We have been blessed with numerous visits.”
Today, both sides await a ruling from the Wyoming Supreme Court.
“Dysfunctional” towns
In Aspen, the proposal to limit new homes to 15,000 square feet was unanimously approved several weeks ago by the Pitkin County commissioners. A second reading with some revisions is due April 11 or 12, according to Hatfield.
“Part of the reason for the restriction is the service people required to run a gigantic home,” the commissioner said. “They’ve got a masseuse, a caterer, a landscape guy, a hot-tub guy, the lawn people, the plumbers and electricians, the maids and a caretaker,” said Hatfield, who has lived in the area with his wife for 30 years.
The Hatfields, by the way, live in a 1,000-square-foot condo down the road in Snowmass. He is a property manager. And he’s been to Prince Bandar’s home.
“It’s like a city in itself,” Hatfield said of the prince’s spread.
As for the 15,000-square-foot limit, Hatfield adds: “It’s the same size as the Pitkin County Courthouse.”
At least one new home will be larger than the courthouse. On Wednesday, county commissioners approved the construction of a 23,250-square-foot home. The proposed new law did not apply.
“I suppose guilt could change things in Aspen,” said CU professor Clark. “Guilt in the sense that they feel their community has become excessively exclusionary. A community becomes dysfunctional when residents have to drive to an adjoining community to get a tank of gas or a tube of toothpaste. It’s residential and commercial gentrification.”
And he repeated an earlier thought, that a 15,000-square- foot limit isn’t much of a limit.
But Hatfield said there’s no way the home size limit will get any smaller.
“Resorts,” he said, “are a dime a dozen. This is still Aspen.”
