A rare miss for Kaali-Nagy?

Maybe not — I haven’t seen it personally, yet — but his new listing at 293 Chapman Lane (293 Lake Avenue, but down a side lane, and well removed from Lake’s traffic noise) strikes me as overlarge, even for its 1.5 acres. This was recently the site of an obsolete old house on two separate building lots totaling 3.7 acres, but the house was razed by Kaali-Nagy and two houses are going up. This is the first to be finished.

At its full 3.7 acres, the land was really attractive, especially because it’s on lower Lake, very close to town, and i had clients who were tempted, but as a two-lot split, not so much. I can’t quite tell, but it appears that there’s a shared driveway leading to the under-construction house to the south, and that’s unattractive. Further, most of the acreage of this lot is down a steep cliff and inaccessible without a bungee cord. Bummer.

And to my eye, the house is just too damn big. Maybe not, and it could very well work for a buyer interested in a very large house three minutes from the Avenue, but this is a Kaali-Nagy design that doesn’t work for me. Of course, I felt the same way about his houses on Marks Road in Riverside a few years ago and, while they had to shed a million or so before they sold, sell they did, so I’m sure this will all sort itself out, if for no other reason than a Kaali-Nagy house is always, always built to the highest standard of quality, and good construction will always sell. Eventually.

Subject parcel, top. Tree line demarks 50’ cliff leading to swamp