Billionaire Pied -à-Terre: Racing Driver’s Colorado Mansion On The Block
A home modelled after the Playboy Mansion – complete with an enormous car museum - has been listed for nearly US$25 million.
The 74-acre Evergreen, Colorado-based estate is owned by retired racing driver Richard Berry, who bought the site in the late 1990s, and spent seven years designing it, completing in 2004. The Berry family made their fortune after his grandfather invented the Yellow Pages, which he later sold to to BellSouth which then became AT&T.
The 50,275-square-foot mansion, known as Thunder Ridge, includes seven bedrooms and 16 bathrooms. According to an interview in The Wall Street Journal, various features in the home were inspired by Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion, such as the Tiki bar and grotto-style indoor pool with its own waterfall, surrounded by palm trees, with a men and women’s changing room.
Even the ceiling is carefully designed, painted to mimic the constellations and shooting stars in the night sky with a twinkling star scape created by a myriad fibre optics.
“I wanted to have a piece of the Playboy Mansion here in Colorado,” he told The Wall Street Journal.
One of the other features unique to the car-loving owner, includes a vast, hangar-style car museum which can hold over 100 vehicles. At 30,000 square feet, is larger than the home itself. It even has its own gas station, car wash and one bedroom, 2-bath living quarters for a caretaker.
Berry's car collection numbers around 30, scaled down from his former 230+ car collection. His favourite car, according to reports, is his Bugatti Veyron, which is one of the fastest cars in the world with a top speed of around 268mph. The hangar could be turned into a basketball court, an ice-rink or stables, he told The WSJ.
There is also a Star Trek-style cinema with motion-enabled, captain-themed seats and light-up faux control panels on the walls.
“Our goal when we built this theater was to literally build the cleanest, loudest, most incredible theater on the planet. That was the goal from the get-go,” Berry told The WSJ.
A dramatic saltwater aquarium lights up the entrance. The home has its own fully-equipped hair and beauty salon and incredible wine cellar with a tasting area.
The bedroom suites are mainly located in a separate wing in the home, while the master suite takes up most of the upper level of the house, built with every luxury such as exotic woods, marble in the bathroom and an enormous walk-in wardrobe.
He is selling because his children, now in their twenties, have left home and he no longer needs the space.“Twenty-five thousand feet for one person is way too much,” he said to The WSJ.
Situated on a mountaintop 30 minutes outside of Denver, Colorado, with nearly 360 degree of expansive forest views, the unique estate is represented by LIV Sotheby’s International Realty. It has been listed for US$24,799,000.
