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It stands like a castle on the Scioto River, a home so large that experts cannot agree on its size. Is the main house 24,414 square feet or 26,828? Or somewhere in between? The mystery seems fitting for a house that exudes fantasy as much as reality.
It stands like a castle on the Scioto River, a home so large that experts cannot agree on its size.
Is the main house 24,414 square feet or 26,828? Or somewhere in between?
The mystery seems fitting for a house that exudes fantasy as much as reality.
With its indoor fountains and Tuscan murals, princess balconies and built-in stage, the property at 4500 Dublin Rd. on the Northwest Side appears better-suited to the hills of Bavaria than the banks of the Scioto.
Like fairy-tale castles, the home is loaded with eccentricities: a balcony that extends over the entrance, allowing residents to wave hello or goodbye to friends; a 15-foot gate that descends from the ceiling to protect second-floor bedrooms from intruders; a five-story elevator; 42 furnaces; a hair salon overlooking the master bedroom; and a sledding hill complete with moguls -- all on 6.6 acres.
Also like storybook castles, the home disguises a tale of greed and wrongdoing.
Most recently, it belonged to Thomas Parenteau, a custom homebuilder who last year was sentenced to 22 years in prison for bank fraud, tax conspiracy, money laundering and other crimes.
On Thursday, the main lender on the estate, Iberia Bank, bought it back at a U.S. Justice Department auction for the minimum bid of $3.2 million. The Columbus real-estate company Realty Executives Decision plans to place it on the market soon, on behalf of Iberia.
Although Parenteau lived in it most recently, the house owes its design to its builder, Don Ettore, who owned the now-defunct housing firm Qualstan Corp.
Originally, in 1990, Ettore built a contemporary home of just more than 5,000 square feet with walls of glass overlooking the river.
Five years later, though, he returned from a European trip envisioning something much grander.
“He was enamored of some the classic architecture in Europe and ... decided that he really wanted a European house,” recalled Larry Crimmel, a Columbus architect who helped design the original house and the renovation for Ettore.
“I had an architect friend from California, Barry Jardine, who had settled down in Columbus and had real experience in classical-type work -- so from 1995 to 1998, we vastly changed and expanded the house.”
The project consumed so much of Crimmel’s and Jardine’s time that they established an office in an unused apartment inside the home.
Ettore’s desire to re-create a bit of Europe prompted him to hire Columbus artist Michael Dickinson to paint Tuscan-inspired murals throughout the place.
“When he hired me,” Dickinson recalled, “he asked if I could clear my schedule for three years.”
About nine months later, though, Ettore suddenly laid off Dickinson and other contractors. The house had taken a financial toll.
Ettore and his family lived in the home during the renovation, but he died in 2001 (at age 63) before completing his Tuscany-on-the-Scioto dream world.
“I felt bad for Mr. Ettore,” Dickinson said. “That was going to be his little kingdom, and he didn’t get a chance to enjoy it.”
Instead, National City Bank repossessed the house.
In 2003, Parenteau’s mistress, Pamela McCarty, bought it from the bank for $1.5 million as a home for her and Parenteau and, for a while, Parenteau’s wife and children.
Parenteau, who had worked with Ettore and was familiar with the home, put the final touches on Ettore’s vision. (He also changed the name on the entrance from Ettore to Loretta, in honor of his mother.)
The result is the second-largest home in the county, behind Leslie H. Wexner’s 43,817-square-foot mansion in New Albany.
In addition to the main house, the Dublin Road home includes a pool house, a boathouse, a two-apartment guest house, docks, a sunken clay tennis court with stadium lights, a croquet court, a shuffleboard court, an in-ground swimming pool and a playhouse that Crimmel modeled on an old railroad depot in Marietta.
The unique design, including multiple bedroom lofts, makes determining a precise size almost impossible. Three appraisers hired to value the home for the recent auction differed by as much as 2,000 square feet on the size.
With the additional buildings, the square footage increases to more than 30,000.
One appraiser counted a combined 18 bedrooms, 26 baths and 11 kitchens.
Yet quantifying even something as simple as bedrooms, in this case, proves daunting: The master suite, for example, includes three rooms that could easily serve as bedrooms, as well as a kitchen, a dining room and another room that might have been a dressing room or a gift-wrapping room.
And how to count bedrooms in the two apartments in a separate building? What about the bedrooms in the two full apartments contained in the main building? Or the large room in the children’s wing that overlooks the driveway?
Depending on how those and other rooms are counted, 16 might be a more accurate bedroom tally.
The home additions and scale have left a byzantine layout that defies conventional notions of home design.
Why, for example, does a door lead from the roof onto an inaccessible perch high above a stairwell? Why does a kitchen or kitchenette seem to occupy most every nook?
Appraisers estimated the home’s value between $3.9?million and $5.5 million, but acknowledge that the market for the property is limited.
“Resales in the area are nonexistent for houses of this size,” one appraiser noted.
As another noted, fewer than four homes a year typically sell for more than $2 million in central Ohio.
“The resale market is relatively untested locally,” the appraiser continued. “Houses of this size and value range tend to be custom-constructed and are very personalized to taste and lifestyle.”
In their efforts to value the property, the appraisers struggled to find comparable sales. The best they found was 1 New Albany Farms Rd. in New Albany -- an 18,000-square-foot house that sold in 2010 for a central Ohio record of $5.2 million.
But, as an appraiser noted, the New Albany property is in better condition, more conventionally designed and in an area with higher property values.
Appraisers estimate that finding a buyer for the riverfront estate could take up to five years.
Matt Beckett, who is listing the home for Realty Executives, is preparing a marketing strategy that keeps the narrow pool of prospective buyers in mind.
“We’re just going to have to get really creative with this one,” he said.
jweiker@dispatch.com
