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Marco
high-end home raises the bar
Sand Dollar six-category winner sets sales price of $17.9 million
By
QUENTIN ROUX, Staff Writer
June 2, 2004 Six
out of seven ain't bad. That's
the number of first-place awards scooped up by Marco Island developer Everett
Van Hoesen's luxury Villa Venezia mansion in the latest Collier Building Industry
Association's Sand Dollar Awards. The
awards, announced May 22 at The Registry Resort in Naples, recognize the "highest
level of professionalism and excellence in the industry." They
encompass building, development, landscape design, interior design, remodeling,
commercial design, advertising, marketing and sales. One
month ago, while overseeing the final touches to the eight-bedroom, eight-bathroom
(and two half-baths) mansion on "Millionaires' Row" on Marco Island's
Caxambas Island, Van Hoesen was quietly confident. "We'll
see how we do this time," he said then, referring to the previous year's
Sand Dollar Awards, which saw his neighboring Villa Tuscany mansion win Best Home
award in the $7 million-plus range. It
sold soon afterward for around $7 million. Villa
Venezia, inspired by Van Hoesen's love of Italian medieval design, this year won
the following categories: —
product design of the year for a single family home valued at more than $10 million;
— Gulf access/one-of-a-kind home
valued at more than $10 million; —
best kitchen for a single-family home valued at more than $9 million; —
best outdoor living area for a single-family home valued at more than $8 million;
— best interior merchandising for
a single-family home valued at more than $8 million, (by Novakovich & Associates
Inc.) and: — grand award
for perfect scores in the product design of the year category. The
only category in which the Villa Venezia didn't romp home, Van Hoesen said, was
master suite. "One
reason I had for being confident in receiving some awards," Van Hoesen said,
"was when one group of judges stayed around for about two hours in the best
one-of-a-kind category." He
said traditionally, judges bring ribbons in acknowledgment of simply entering
the CBIA awards, and they write comments about selected features they like on
the back. "They wrote,
'the whole bloody thing.' That made us rather hopeful," Van Hoesen said.
He said after the awards on May
22, he'd highly appreciated a comment by a CBIA official that his company had
really put Marco Island on the map. "He
told me the Villa Venezia was the finest high-end mansion in the county,"
Van Hoesen said. He said
he was particularly proud of some of the unique touches he and his team had introduced
to Villa Venezia. Travertine
driveways of "young" marble shipped in from Turkey and Italy; welcoming
gothic arches and Corinthian columns resembling the Doge's Palace in Venice; a
foyer chandelier priced at $4,000; a coquina-carved staircase weighing 8 tons;
a 1,000-bottle wine cellar; two elevators; and a guest powder room worthy of any
five-star hotel are just some of the eye-catching enhancements. Van
Hoesen said the probable asking price for the Villa Venezia will be $17.9 million.
"We've already had some people
express interest," he said, "and now we might be able to talk to somebody
who really likes the place." He
said his obvious target market would be chief executive officers, celebrities
or people flush with "old" money. Van
Hoesen singled out Novakovich & Associates of Naples, project manager Bob
Van Winkle, and also local artists Steven Muldoon and Stan Saran as being
vital to the awards success. Although
relatively new in the custom-home business on Marco, Van Hoesen has a long history
of high-end construction in Greenwich, Conn. Retiring
as an IBM executive at age 52 in 1985, Van Hoesen formed Van Hoesen Realty with
his son David, to whom he turned over the business in 1995. Upon
arrival on Marco soon afterward, he formed Vanguard Development Group. | 
