That Dream Isn't Coming True Today
My heart isn't broken-broken... I'm just... devastated on the more surface-level of crushing disappointments. We're talking epidermis, not dermis, or hyper dermis- heaven forbid.
I dream a lot. Not daydreams the way most people daydream, I have come to learn. Ever since I can remember, my daydreams have taken the form of problem-solving.
My most documented daydream, is the mansion I would have if "money was no object". And because I have never been someone who cleans well (problem), and because I was born a person who cannot stand the idea of spending money on something indefinitely (problem for mansions), on the dozens upon dozens of sketched-out floorplans of my dream mansion I have always drawn in a ballroom for The Weddings. Because if you have a ballroom, how do you not let the girls in the area have their weddings there, you absolute monster? Weddings (answer).
This has gotten messy already. I am trying to convey how many decades have passed as I have had this same dream; a "problem" which I have mentally solved hundreds of times, the same way.
I live in Sandy, Utah, and my best friend growing up lived on Robidoux Road. There is a mysterious mansion on Robidoux that can't be seen from the road, or the golf course it touches, or even the neighbor's houses. The mature trees keep anyone from seeing in. What you can see from a distance if you're in just the right few spots, is the chimneys. They hint of what lies below them. I have never been able to put my finger on it, but seeing the chimneys gives a feeling of, "What in the world is that?" First of all, there are many. But the look of them... like I said, as a kid I didn't know what I was looking at or why chimneys piqued my curiosity the way they did.
But a few days ago, I learned a lot more about all of this, because the Webster Mansion is for sale.
The Websters made their money in masonry. When they built a house for their family (in either the early 80's or 90's), they made it out of bricks. And... damn.
First of all... they chimneys: (this doesn't do them justice, of course)
The children's wing's family room fireplace:
From what we know and can deduce from numbers of bedrooms et cetera, the Websters had 4 kids, a dad who was still working, and at least one parent who liked to host parties. Especially weddings.
Alright look, let me just put up pictures of the place. I know what you're thinking and the answer is 18,000 square feet. The biggest mansion ever? Of course not. But, you know, plenty big. Plenty.
The top balconies are off of the kid's rooms. Below those are the main kitchen and family room.
The basement? Just open entertaining space, with its own kitchen, bathrooms, and entrance, surrounded by covered patio. Imagine! Imagine how many 8-tops you could put out there!
Okay, so the Websters raised their kids here, and eventually sold to the daughter of an Oil Guy- whose full name I know but I'll leave out just to be decent. She also raised her family here. Turns out, Hyrum went to school with one of her kids. Then 6 or so years ago, she sold to a Mr. Coffee who runs hospices and, in the case of this beautiful, many-roomed edifice, drug treatment centers. Or just the single center. I didn’t check.
They set up a luxury treatment facility, here, and when we talked to their CEO Jonathan, yesterday, he wanted us to know that a lot of people did a lot of really important and beautiful healing here. This doesn't surprise me, and I was so touched at how moved he was when he told us. For the center to be up to code they changed some of the layout, including a few things in the kitchen, made 2 bathrooms out of the main suite bathroom, turned the main suite closet into a board room (*shakes head trying to comprehend*), and converted the second 3-car garage into a set of offices. Oh, and industrial fire sprinklers. Yes the ones like in the movie theaters. You hardly notice them.
They also updated several things about the interior that had never been updated, like a lot of oak features, interior paint, and replaced a lot of carpet with more durable flooring. But, nice durable flooring.
Anyway, despite the effective and transformative work Jonathan and the others were doing, the treatment center never made money. So, about a year ago they moved to a different location, and the house has been on the market since then.
Cut to, Hyrum wanting to do what we can ahead of time to encourage the kids to choose to stay near us when they grow up, leading to dreams and plans for a family compound. Don't look at me like that, they're a thing that exists. I lived on one in Mexico when I went to college there, and they're so amazing. Don't want to heat a pool all year long because what a waste? Not if 28 people are sharing utilities and actually using the pool. Allergic to dogs but your son is dying for a puppy? Share the cousin's dog. Need a babysitter? Go next door. Friends to walk to school with. More kids to play with than just your siblings. More grownups who love and watch out for you. Tighter relationships. Broader network of connections. See? I knew you'd come around.
We've been looking at undeveloped property all over the Salt Lake Valley and a bit north, too. (What about south, you ask? Gross, is my answer. Just kidding. A little that way, too.) We would love to have land that is zoned for horses and of course has to be developable for more homes. These are *cough*... not cheap. We live so deep in the suburbs. And some short-sighted influencers decided about 12-13 years ago that if we made Utah "cool" in people's eyes, then we would have more cool concerts come through on tour. Congratulations, Ember, our home prices have doubled.
So there's this place called Dimple Dell that is a crack on the fault line that Salt Lake County made into a green-space area 40 or so years ago. It's around 2,000 acres of trails and a natural creek where you can hike or trail run or ride horses, and it's awesome. There used to be a bunch of 10+ acres properties down there, which my mom and I looked at when we moved to Utah back in the 90's. There are not many left. But the ones that are there, border the recreation area, and that would be sick. Space, green, horses, stores and airport close-by. Dreams coming true.
We've been looking at the places that are left down there, and there are some options. Mostly undeveloped. I'm going to say a price and it is not accurate at all, just for our purposes, today. Let's say a 7 acre property on undeveloped, horse-zoned property that borders Dimple Dell Recreation Area, with a 1970's ranch house on it, is going for $10 million today (it's not) and we can afford that (we can't). Well guess what, real estate fans? So is the Webster Mansion. 7 Acres with a mansion on it costs the same as just land. The Webster Mansion (pause for effect) is free. You're buying the land. Which leads me to the elephant in the room.
I DON'T want a mansion, and money IS an object. I can't even keep 3,000 square feet clean, much less 6 times that. I don't want to furnish a mansion, and I don't want to have a pool that I don't want to pay to keep heated. See? Your brain just got ahead of me, didn't it?
If you're reading this, you're probably one of the families we invited to move into the mansion with us. For crying out loud- if a few families can have a compound in a few houses, why couldn't they have a compound in a few houses... that are all stuck together? You wouldn't have to leave Sandy, and our kids wouldn't even have to change schools! Did I mention? Roubidoux Road is mere yards from our house. Georgia walks past the mansion to go to her friends' houses.
So we asked the brothers if they would want to move in with us! We could split the kids wing from the primary wing and live in different whole wings and our individual spaces wouldn't be smaller than our current houses, and we'd share a pool and a huge, beautiful yard, and a neighborhood, and there is even space for horses! The brothers all said no. So we asked friends and Hyrum's parents, and my brother, and... well it seems like people aren't excited about suddenly moving into a mansion with another family. At least, not us.
But Hyrum seemed determined to make this place work. It's the lowest price-per-square-foot of the properties on the market that fit even a large part of our requirements. The value is indisputable. And that's what hooked Hyrum like a foxy-jig does a striper.
I'm imagining trying to live in a place like this. Keeping it clean. Furnishing it. Dealing with people treating our kids differently, maybe? Maintenance! They just put on a new roof... for $278k. Or? What if we don't do all that? I can't stand the idea of living in this place of my childhood dreams, and NOT taking care of it. I can't do it. So... house keeper, grounds keeper, pool guy... Panic ensues. But... The realtor mentioned how the previous families had weddings, "all the time".
And my little-girl (and bigger girl) dreams start talking. With a little money up front, make the house swoony again, and anyone even remotely like me will want a chance to have their wedding here. The price of the rental covers the cleaning fees... and what else what else... We're out of town on the weekends all summer anyway, so we wouldn't even have to stay out of the way. But if we did we could just hang out in the kids wing, which is upstairs and out of the way. But wait... I was just at my cute cousin's wedding in Texas a couple of weeks ago and they had a Bride's room in a huge barn, where she and her bridesmaids hung out all day and there isn't a place for that... unless we made the primary suite a full-on brides room... it has to be turned back into a regular bathroom anyway... and then I could get the barber chair I've always wanted for myself and put it in there for when the bride is doing bride things...
We checked zoning, he said he would call us back. We started calling wedding planners to see what they thought about the space and if it really would work outside of my head, and they seem enthusiastic.
On top of all of that, the gas company was out at the property yesterday, measuring for something. Turns out, developers are clamoring to see if they can get utilities across the bridge and into the property so they can tear down the house of my actual dreams, and replace it with 12 others.
You might need to have some context about the profundity of my hatred of developers and what they do with every spare centimeter of dirt, and how they pay an average of 6 times what anyone else would pay for it because they can split it and sell it and it makes sense for their ROI, and how regular people are then priced out of literally anything in which a developer is interested. But then again, maybe not.
But then the zoning guy called us back. No weddings. Specifically, weddings. The neighbors complained about wedding noise enough that the county set a rule on this property that not only forbids paid weddings, but even if we wanted to do a bed-and-breakfast (we wouldn't), that would be allowed, but never if a wedding is involved in the bedding-and-breakfasting.
Okay... okay. So, we tried. We looked at it from so many angles and determined that for this to happen, it would include the house doing part of the work.
Someone else will want it, though right?
It's been on the market for a year. Developers have called the county about this property a lot. We know because we talked to the county guy they call, this morning. It has been under contract like 4 times and it keeps getting left behind.
I love watching people online decide to take on the work of historic buildings or castles and bring them back to their former glory. I am near obsessed with the sheer monetary brilliance of using something that was very expensive to make and being smart enough to know when one can swoop in a snatch it up when people stopped paying attention and the asking price goes down.
Mansions are built by rich people for their specific tastes, so when the original owner moves out, there are details that the next rich people don't want, and the price goes down and down and down. The specific details are usually a cigar room, or a huge wine cellar, or an in-ground hot tub for 30 that leaks now. I built this house in my mind and on paper a thousand times. And I dreamt about the house that might be under those chimneys just as often. A lot of people don't want a house with this much entertaining space, it seems. But all of my dreams were about to come true, including the part about living in my event venue.
My friend Alisha and I were looking for spaces to buy to do events. They don't make enough money, we learned. So, my mind went back to the venue-you-live-in scenario. It was just the perfect idea that would never actually happen, until it almost did.
And not only that, it may actually just get torn down.
I don't need a mansion. It's not that I was hoping to live in a mansion. Or on a golf course or any of the reasons that the realtor said "dreamers who can't afford it" keep looking at it. It's just that a significant number of my dreams were about to come true. Having a beautiful place for my friend's kids or neighborhood girls or anyone could have their wedding or baby shower or work party. My favorite room in the house is the library. I could fit my whole book club in there, and everyone would have somewhere to sit.
I look at the brick work and think of the Websters and all the thought that went into this house. Its humongous for a house, but the layout makes sense. It's like all of my favorite people: flexible, welcoming, and generous.
The waste it would be for this place to be demolished, is sinful to me.
But the right thing doesn't always happen. And maybe something good could come out of it, who knows? And those dreams could come true somewhere else, still.
Just not today.
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