Houses of style

The five largest houses in Hillsborough County are in Avila. A French-style chateau and Arabian-like palace are under construction right now.

By BILL COATS

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 11, 2000

AVILA -- The house on the cul de sac will look like a French chateau, with a grand foyer stretching from front to back and spacious balconies at both ends.

The house around the corner will look like an Arabian palace. A balcony will overlook the family room, which will overlook the lanai, which will overlook the pool, spa and 1,600-square-foot cabana, all of which will overlook the lake.

But these houses are in neither France nor the Mideast. Both are under construction in Avila, a gated community just south of Lutz.

When finished, the chateau will become the second largest house in Hillsborough County. The palace will become the fourth.

The palace will be the new home of Eddie DeBartolo Jr. and his wife Candy. DeBartolo runs the mall-building Edward J. DeBartolo Corp., based in Youngstown, Ohio, but is best known as the former owner of football's San Francisco 49ers.

The chateau will go down in real estate history as Hillsborough's most spectacular "spec" house. Its builders, Joe and Liz O'Connell of RJL O'Connell Inc., hope to live and entertain there for a few years, then sell the house for around $6-million.

Liz O'Connell recently returned from a Paris shopping trip for furnishings such as wood panels.

"I think we really have that chateau look and conception right," she said.

The DeBartolos declined comment through their builder, Bobby Alvarez of Alvarez Homes. They moved to Avila from San Francisco last year after DeBartolo surrendered control of the 49ers to his estranged sister. While their house is under construction, they live temporarily just across Lake Sloan in a home they bought for $1-million.

'Hearth' and 'hardened' rooms

The O'Connell home will have six guest suites and 14 bathrooms. The master bath and exercise room will have a waterfall and seven archways. There will be a dining room to seat 36, a billiards room with a balcony, a 24-seat cinema with a 12-foot screen and an indoor pool nearly surrounded by glass, overlooking a pond. On the more practical side, it will have nine air-conditioning units, two kitchens and a glassed elevator.

Judging from floor plans filed with the county, the DeBartolo house will have only one indoor kitchen (a smaller one will be on the screened lanai). But that kitchen will have two dishwashers and a wall of four ovens. The house will feature at least three fireplaces, but apparently none in the "hearth room," which will adjoin the breakfast area and will look out on a row of trellises and the motor court.

The house also will contain a security guard office. A hidden door in the library will lead into a 230-square-foot "hardened room," with a concrete ceiling and walls.

Are such mega-mansions the latest manifestation of the new economy? Not necessarily.

"Housing on the whole seems to be getting larger and more expensive," said Burt Folce, director of the county's Development Services division. "But those that are really off the scale, I don't see a lot more of those than we've seen before."

Jay Fechtel, whose company builds big, custom-designed houses, agrees.

"There's a fairly pragmatic strain running through a lot of people with wealth these days," Fechtel said.

Newfound wealth is likelier to translate into a surge of houses in the 5,000- to 7,000-square-foot range, Fechtel said.

"There's a lot of desire in the marketplace for sensible spending," he said.

Stretching boundaries

The DeBartolo and O'Connell houses will mean that the five largest houses in the county all are in the same neighborhood, Avila.

Fechtel said that's because Avila is a rare location where well-heeled buyers can find sufficient land for a large house, yet still belong to a neighborhood.

The O'Connells designed their long, narrow chateau to fit across the rear of a two-acre lot, while sparing clusters of live oaks in front.

To accommodate the DeBartolo house, the couple bought three lakefront lots for $1.3-million and demolished the old offices of Avila Realty.

Vince Arcuri, a real estate agent who has sold a half-dozen homes in Avila, said the southeastern corner of the development containing the two mansions appears to be Avila's last frontier. Developer Hi Sierra couldn't be reached for comment.

"I think he's probably at the end of what he can do," Arcuri said.

He said Sierra's company maintained the development's pricy standards over the years by developing Avila gradually.

"They've done a masterful job of just adding what they needed to add," Arcuri said.

In contrast, the developers of Cheval sought to rival Avila but had to re-plan sections of Cheval for small-lot $125,000 houses when home-buying slowed in the early 1990s, Arcuri said.

He predicted the O'Connell and DeBartolo houses will stretch the boundaries for what is a reasonable scale of home in Avila.

"It would make me a lot more comfortable spending a million or a million and a half dollars in that neighborhood," Arcuri said. "You never want to buy the most expensive house in a neighborhood."

For people already living in Avila, reaction to the newest mansions is blase, he said.

"They have seen it all," Arcuri said. "I think it's just another day in the park."

But not so among real estate agents, he said.

"The realtors are talking about it. The people in Tampa are talking about it."

- Staff writer Judy Stark contributed to this article. Bill Coats can be reached at (813) 226-3469 or coats@sptimes.com.

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