June 16, 2000

72 RMS, OCEAN VU, MAKE BEST OFFER

By STEVE FRIESS
Staff Writer

Maybe your living room seems a little cramped these days. Or you need some extra garage space, now that the kid's got his driver's license. Or perhaps you're just sick of sparring over who takes a shower first. Save those nickels and dimes. For the modest price of 12 million Happy Meals, your woes are over.

But hurry up and write that check: What's being billed as the most expensive house ever built "on spec" -- meaning without a specific buyer lined up -- officially goes on sale today in Manalapan, a small island town just north of Boynton Beach.

No doubt about it, this is one handsome little $30 million shack. The 32,000-square-foot mansion faces 300 feet of ocean coastline along State Road A1A, a view that can be soaked up, or at least glimpsed, from all but one of the place's 72 rooms, a first-floor bedroom.

"This house is meant to be truly lived in," cooed developer Frank McKinney, standing under a 4,000-pound crystal chandelier imported from a 19th century French chateau to illuminate the 1,050-square-foot grand salon.

The eastern wall of the room, which exposes that precious Atlantic vista, is made of three of the largest single-pane windows -- each 20 feet tall and 10 feet wide -- in the Southeastern United States, McKinney said.

"Nothing about this house is meant to be overly formal," he said, moving on to the "Out of Florida and Into Africa" room that boasts images of giraffes and elephants amid Sahara-colored tile flooring and paneling. "The people who live here shouldn't have to feel like they have to have a butler in every room to catch anything that might fall."

McKinney isn't yet ready for the mansion at 1370 S. Ocean Blvd., to have that lived-in look. The 300 invited guests attending an elaborate soiree and fireworks spectacular tonight must remove their shoes before they enter.

When they do, they'll actually be wandering through the former Generoso Pope estate, built by the man who founded the National Enquirer. It has been rebuilt by an Indiana-born developer with a penchant for green onyx from Pakistan and precious Brazilian wood.

McKinney and wife, Nilsa, bought the five-year-old Pope home last year for $15 million, tore it down to its poured-concrete walls and then added another 4,000 square feet. That included the guest house, the tropical foliage landscaping and a tennis court.

Even McKinney's to-do list virtually ends all to-do lists. A sheet of last-minute instructions for workers Thursday included:

"Detail Mexican tile floor on hands and knees, removing minor paint spots, splotches, etc."

"Her shower: Polish big shower head, all shower fixtures, remove drip marks on walls and floors."

"Need gold toilet handle."

McKinney's favorite feature is the grand master bedroom, an 800-square-foot space at the southeast corner of the mansion, decked with taupe silk wallpaper. The woman's bathroom features counters and shower flooring made of that Pakistani green onyx. A pathway leads to a 600-square-foot walk-in closet.

"Gotta do what you can to keep the marriage together," a chuckling McKinney said. He recalled that his first fixer-upper in the real estate business was a house that could fit in that closet.

"Even with all that space, I guarantee you I'll hear complaints from the woman that there's not enough."

The 36-year-old developer said the house is a significant business risk, but he's confident it will pay off. He hinted, in fact, that he may unload the place for more than the $29.9 million list price because a similar, slightly smaller mansion up the street, owned by shopping mall magnate and Indiana Pacers co-owner Mel Simon, went for $35 million last month.

Whatever price McKinney ends up getting, it's likely to be the most paid for a spec home. A $12 million home he built on spec and sold in Delray Beach in 1998 now holds that record, he says.

Even in Manalapan, with 167 homes that had a county-high average assessed valuation of $1.3 million in 1999, the numbers on the new house are boggling.

"That is the greatest amount I've heard of [for] a spec home built in Florida," said an astonished Jeff Zipper, spokesman for the Orlando-based Florida Association of Realtors. "It must be in a real nice location with a lot of powerful amenities. I'm certainly surprised to hear that kind of figure. I guess if you're gonna build a castle, you got to figure there's a king or queen that's going to claim it."

By McKinney's calculation, only about 50,000 people can afford it. That's the estimated number of humans worth more than $100 million, and McKinney figures it would take that much to maintain such a property.

The electric bill alone is $3,000 a month, he said. And don't forget the cost of maintaining an automated window-washing system, polishing the marble floors of the three garages and cleaning more than a dozen toilets.

"This is somebody's lifetime achievement award to themselves," said McKinney, who added that he's a "proud but humble" man despite dubbing himself the "King of the Ultra High-End Speculative Real Estate Market" in news releases.

"This will be an heirloom."

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