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Enthralled by luxury living?

The Greater Tampa Bay Luxury Home Tour will let you dream while supporting a worthy nonprofit cause.

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published October 6, 2006

FISHHAWK RANCH -- It's the kind of home usually confined to the pages of a storybook but rarely traversed by mere mortals: A 5,070-square-foot house with a stone turret, grand circular staircase crowned by a faux painted ceiling, and a 30-foot-wide wall of windows in a massive living room bedecked with a towering stone fireplace.

The home, called the Renaissance, carries a princely price tag of $1.5 million.

Big bucks, yes.

But who says you can't dream?

It's one of 15 estate homes featured on the Greater Tampa Bay Luxury Home Tour, a glittering debut in a jam-packed local home tour season that typically kicks off in the fall and runs through late spring.

Organizers say this tour, which runs this weekend and next, is unique because it features ultra-glam model homes that have been professionally decorated and sit in some of Tampa Bay's most posh developments, including MiraBay, FishHawk Ranch, Connerton and Grand Cypress on Lake Tarpon. Everything from appliances to window treatments to flooring are up-to-the-minute and information is supplied by the fistful to tourgoers who might want to order similar products for their own homes.

But the event is noteworthy for another, even bigger reason: Most of the proceeds go to the nonprofit American Public Media, which produces more than 20 National Public Radio programs including A Prairie Home Companion, Marketplace, Saint Paul Sunday and Writer's Almanac.

"It's really a great concept," says Tom Gavaras, director of marketing for Greenspring Media Group, a for-profit publishing company from Minneapolis that helps orchestrate the event and is owned by American Public Media.

Greenspring produced its first luxury home tour six years ago in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The event was such a hit the company decided to organize more, including ones in Chicago, Indianapolis, Dallas, Phoenix, Charlotte and another in Naples, Fla., which will host its third such tour in February.

Why home tours?

Gavaras said a survey of readers of Greenspring publications - they publish 14 regional and national magazines - found that many were typically high-income and many owned second homes. Realistically, they could afford to buy the homes highlighted on the tours, a bonus for builders, but they also could afford the amenities that often come with such homes.

The houses on the Tampa Bay Luxury Home Tour range in price from $1-million to $3.4-million and include the kind of things you'd expect to find in such palatial digs. One features a custom-designed, 300-gallon saltwater aquarium. Another has a 2,400-square-foot outdoor entertainment area with a free-form pool, fireplace and fully equipped outdoor kitchen. The list of offerings goes on: an 80-bottle wine room, silver-leaf molding, a 372-square-foot poolside cabana. One home, at Connerton, comes equipped with an octagonal den featuring hand-painted world maps covering each wall and a compass painted on the ceiling.

"People aren't just interested in the homes," Gavaras says, "but in the high-end products featured in those homes. They have the discretionary incomes to afford homes like this and the services or products."

At $15 a person for advance tickets, $20 at the door and $5 for one home, the cost of the luxury home tour isn't so steep that it's out of reach for most people. But it's enough to attract only serious home tour aficionados in a metropolitan area that's already inundated with home tours.

From neighborhood associations to garden clubs, everyone has gotten into the act, it seems, coaxing members with beautiful homes to open their doors to sometimes hundreds of curious visitors.

The popularity of such tours has as much to do with voyeurism as it does with dreaming, although some folks have been known to whip out their checkbooks and buy the perfect model home on the spot, says John Heagney, whose Tampa-Bay public relations firm is promoting the luxury tour.

On the other hand, visitors with average incomes are likely to spend money on a high-end appliance or something else they see that's easily replicated in their own homes.

Home tours he says, "are a vicarious thrill for many people" who want to see in person how the other half live.

"It comes down to dreaming and people love to dream," he explains.

The tour highlights the most luxurious homes throughout Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties.

"They've pulled together some of the finest and most expensive model homes in the area, homes that are never in the limelight," Heagney says, "It's like putting together a treasure map."

If you go: A self-guided tour runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today through Sunday and Oct. 13-15. Model homes will display the latest in luxury-home architecture and finishes, interior design, technology, craftsmanship, landscaping, appliances and furniture.

Tickets are $15 and available at CVS Pharmacy stores or online at www.luxuryhometour.net. Tickets purchased at the homes are $20. Single-site tickets during the tour will be sold for $5 each. Tour programs are available at CVS stores and in the September-October issue of Tampa Bay Homebuyer magazine.

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com.

[Last modified October 5, 2006, 06:32:02]