Thursday, 24 January 2013
SELLER: Tom and Cinda Hicks
LOCATION: Dallas, TX
PRICE: $135,000,000
SIZE: 28,996 square feet
NOTE: For heaps and piles of photos of every corner of this house, guesthouse, pool house and grounds, head on over here.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: They say everything is bigger in Texas and when it comes to the sprawling estate owned by financier turned professional sport team titan Tom Hicks and his wife Cinda the adage certainly holds true, especially when it comes to the gargantuan $135,000,000 asking price they're rumored and reported by Candy Evans at Candy's DIrt to have quietly slapped on their epic, 25 acre estate in the fancy-schmancy Mayflower Estates 'hood in Dallas.
Mister Hicks made a mountain of money in the leveraged buy out and private equity industries before he started buying up professional sports teams. At various times he's owned the Mesquite Championship Rodeo, fifty-percent of the Liverpool FC (soccer), the Dallas Stars (hockey) and the Texas Rangers (baseball), which he sold in 2010 for around $590 million. Many reports indicate Mister Hicks has lost a significant amount of his net worth over the last few years but make no mistake he and the missus remain filthy rich and financially able to live in whatever manner they choose. Their decision to sell their vast Dallas estate likely has less to do with their declining but still substantial wealth and far more to do with the fact that they're empty nesters rambling around in a house more than ten times the size of the average American home.
According to Miz Evans' thorough discussion, the Hicks' humongous, compound-like estate includes a titanic, chateau-style 28,996 square foot main house, a matching 6,300 square foot guest house and a 7,200 square foot pool house, plus additional outbuildings.
The stately and downright imposing main manse was originally designed in 1939 for Italian count Pio Crespi and his American wife Florence by distinguished high society architect Maurice Fatio and acquired by Mister and Missus Hicks about 16 years ago for an unknown amount of dough. The Hicks spent 5-10 years and—according to Candy's canaries—close to $100,000,000 on a soup-to-nuts renovation, restoration and expansion headed up by motorcycle riding and leather gear loving New York City-based architect Peter Marino.
We're not sure exactly how many bedrooms and bathrooms are in the main house and/or on the property but Your Mama thinks it's probably safe to say there's plenty to room to comfortably house several families.
The grounds are a studied mix of manicured and rustic and include meadow-like rolling lawns, long allees of mature trees, a spring-fed creek criss-crossed by stone bridges, rose and vegetable gardens, several ponds and water features and dense forests woven with quiet pathways. There's also a resort-scaled swimming pool, and adjacent a pool house with recreation facilities and movie theater, a tennis court and second guest house.
The next owner of the Hicks' estate may want to know that maintaining the vast estate will require an astonishing amount of water. Even with a private well Mister and Missus Hicks consistently rank among the highest users of water in a state regularly racked by drought. In August 2011 reports numerous multiple media outlets in the Dallas/Houston/Fort Worth area reported that Mister and Missus Hicks used 1.35 million gallons of public water for the month of June alone and in July 2012 the Dallas Morning News reported they consumed a total of 12,315,020 gallons of public water in 2011.
Like we usually do when it comes to dissin' and discussin' high-priced real estate in Dallas Your Mama gave the deliciously dishy Dallas-based property gossip Candy Evans a ringy-dingy and asked if she thought there was much of a market for a $135,000,000 house in Dallas. She told us, "It is likely there is not a market in Dallas for a $135 million estate but I have no doubt there will be offers because where else can you have 25 acres and horses and be 8 miles from downtown? But then, never underestimate the power of oil money. One local tyke owns a home on Turtle Creek Blvd. plus a home in nearby Highland Park just because he likes to have Sunday picnics on the creek. Rich people are nine kinds of odd ducks so maybe some billionaire oil tyke will indeed thinks it's worth it to cough up $100 million plus for 25 acres to ramble around in?" Well, stranger things have happened, haven't they?
