Still kicking around

Class with a capital K

The former Stan Chewsick folly up at 309 Taconic Road has resurfaced, now priced at $9.399. Interesting, the bank that owns it has been playing down the square footage in past years, claiming only the 13,307 shown on the tax card, and omitting the 8,869 feet of finished, walk-out basement. While that sort of honesty is laudable, I suspect the reasoning behind going with the smaller figure is that nobody in his right mind wants a 23,000 sq.ft. home; especially this one.

We've discussed this white elephant over the past decade as its price has yo-yoed up and down, from $31 million to $9, back to $13, down to $9 again, and so one. The problem really is that this house was never intended to grow so large, but as Chiswick once confessed in an interview, as he was building it, he "kept getting new ideas of what to add".

It's 20 acres and a tear-down, and north Taconic is not a valuable location, so I doubt it will ever sell for anything close to this price. Taxes have dropped, though, and now you'll only have to pay $90,000 each year. That's an improvement, but I'll bet the lenders still aren't happy forking even that much in a losing cause.