Aug 23, 2007

New on the Market—Going the Extra Yard in Lincoln Park

List Price: $3,977,000

The Property: Filling its slender lot nearly to the perimeter leaves this new Lincoln Park mansion with only a few slivers of open ground. No problem: there is still a yard—only it’s upstairs and spread across several levels.

Two of the levels are directly off the family room, right where you might expect a backyard to be. The lower of these levels is a lavish outdoor kitchen; the higher level is a gazebo surrounded by a small pond. On both levels, the roof system conceals six-inch-deep planters that support perennials, native grasses, and other plants.

Two separate green roofs stand at opposite ends of the house’s third floor, each with a roughly 100-square-foot patch of billowy prairie grasses and a seating area surrounded by a formal balustrade. These mini-prairies bookend a large third-story space that the developer, Brad Schreiber of City View Real Estate Group, calls the “zen room.” Clerestory windows flood the space with natural light, making the room—about 40 feet long and 23 feet wide—an airy retreat above the dense neighborhood.

The 12-room house has other sumptuous add-ons, including a programmable bathtub filler, custom backlit cabinets in the kitchen, and a 12-jet body-massage shower in the basement workout room. “A lot of people think there is a conflict between building green and building luxury,” Schreiber says. “I tried to tie them together as much as I could.” That entailed installing power-boosters on low-energy fluorescent lights so they could have dimmers (like incandescent lights) and using recycled leather car upholstery as wall coverings in a powder room.

Price Points: Schreiber estimates that the green aspects of this project added 10 to 15 percent to the price. Many of those eco-friendly amenities won’t be visible to guests—the furnaces “are kick-ass, but nobody’s going to look at them,” Schreiber notes—but a buyer will have the satisfaction of having reduced the large house’s carbon footprint. “Even people who make a lot of money want to do whatever they can to help the earth,” he says.

Listing Agent: Judy Pettas, Premier Properties, (312) 376-4050

Posted at 07:55 AM in On the Market | Permalink

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