Designers Showcase: Marin County manse

<p>The Marin Designer Showcase has always been a gee-whiz attraction, a Disneyland of design, each room a fantasy environment filled with the finest of furnishings, fabrics, antiques, art, appliances and accessories.</p><p>But this year's event in Belvedere, one of the priciest zip codes in the state, where the cheapest house currently for sale is $1.7 million, gives new meaning to the phrase, “over the top.”</p><p>Villa Belvedere is 15,500 square feet of mind-blowing luxury, with built-in iPads throughout the house and electronic glass walls that open up to wrap-around decks on three levels that offer unobstructed, 180-degree views of the San Francisco Bay from Mount Tam and the Golden Gate to the Bay Bridge.</p><p>The views alone are worth the $30 price of admission.</p><p>The asking price? A cool $45 million, making it one of the most expensive homes on the market in the entire country. By comparison, the storied Vanderbilt Mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side last year sold for just slightly more at $48 million.</p><p>“This property is not just for the one percent. It's for the one-half percent,” said Kathy Gaines, a spokeswoman for the Center for Volunteer Non-Profit Leadership, which annually stages the showcase as a fund-raiser.</p><p>“This is probably the most spectacular and stunning home we've featured,” said Linda Davis, CEO of the Marin Center for Volunteer and Non-Profit leadership.</p><p>San Franciscans escaping the fog began building summer homes on Belvedere Island in the late 1800s. Angus McDonald, the president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, built the first home, a 9,000-square-foot Mediterranean mansion with an Art Deco interior, on the site of the new Villa Belvedere in 1938. It was torn down in 1986 and the property sat empty for years while then-owner Jerry Ganz, inventor of the retractable seatbelt, fought the Belvedere officials to build a 31,000-square-foot mega-mansion. He eventually won permission after scaling the project in half, but it stalled at the footings until developer Jeff Paster bought the property two years ago.</p><p>He enlisted San Francisco architect Sandy Walker to design the 27-room contemporary mansion with a nod to the Art Deco style of the original home. Visually compared to a luxury ocean liner, it is anchored bayside by more than 200 piers drilled 15 to 30 feet into bedrock.</p><p>“We had to build a house worthy of the site,” said Paster, who had coveted the property for more than 20 years. “The cost of the land was almost $10 million, so you need a house that is big enough to have the amenities that the site would call for.”</p><p>That means everything from a home theater with stadium seating and an exercise spa and sauna with a reflective brushed-metal ceiling, to a wine vault stocked by Al Brayton of Thirty-Seven Winery and Paradise View Wines in the southern Sonoma Valley.</p><p>One of the more electrifying features is the Savant integrated control system. Controlled by six iPads installed in the walls — one on each story of both wings — the system manages the lighting, heat, air conditioning, security and entertainment systems.</p><p>“You can control all of it from your own iPad or iPhone anywhere in the world. So if you're in Hong Kong and want to use the the security camera in back to check out the view, you can,” Paster said.</p><p>For the showcase, the villa is decked out with $600,000 worth of furnishings, accessories and art brought in by some of the Bay Area's most sought-after designers — names like Suzanne Tucker. Crowned as one of Architectural Digest's top 100 designers in the world, Tucker did the living room in a style that is classic and yet contemporary, with furniture by the great French Art Deco designer Jacques Adnet.</p><p>The mansion's majestic location and interior spaces seemed to cry out for more than decorative art. So the showcase this year has been turned into a gallery spotlighting the work of some 35 artists — most from the Bay Area.</p><p>For the visitors representing the “99.5 percent,” there's plenty to ogle. But there's also the possibility of checking the newest colors, textures and styles, or cribbing ideas that could be done for less, like designer Robin Barnato's clever and cozy right-angled chaise-style bed in one of the sleeping suites.</p><p>You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.</p>