Builder has big hopes for big houses

Workers touch up an area around the pool house of a mansion at Villanova Heights. Photo by Karsten Moran

Villanova Heights goes on sale at last

By Kevin Deutsch

Architect Gary L. Brewer was recently visiting one of the newly completed mansions he’d helped design in the ultra-high-end community of Villanova Heights when a passerby stopped to admire the home.

“Are you almost done with the restoration?” she asked, apparently thinking the home was part of the historic Fieldston community across the street.

It’s the kind of mistake Fieldston residents are unlikely to make, but one Mr. Brewer was pleased with, citing it as he explained the effort made by architects to ensure the massive homes fit in with their smaller Fieldston counterparts.

Villanova Heights’ first two homes are complete and up for sale. The development has been criticized and delayed by neighbors who battled against its reshaping the landscape of the highest hillside in Riverdale, a part of the Special Natural Area District. Others protested the imposition of what they saw as oversized McMansions hard by a historic district with grand homes of its own.

Development has dragged out over years complete with court battles and environmental concerns, but now that Villanova Heights is ready to open its first two sets of ornately carved doors, the hope among its boosters is that the wider community will embrace it.

“When people live in a neighborhood like this and they learn of proposed development, the knee-jerk reaction is going to be horrible. They think it will ruin the character of their neighborhood,” said Mr. Brewer, who designed the homes with architectural giant Robert A.M. Stern, known as the father of post-modern architecture. “We wanted to show that you could add to a historic neighborhood and have it be as good, if not better, in some ways. Our hope is that people will say Villanova Heights looks like Fieldston, and adds to Fieldston.”

The new homes, an 11,135- square-foot French Norman and 11,870-square-foot Colonial Revival, were erected on a 17- acre lot — once dense with trees — on Iselin Avenue and West 250th Street. They are among the largest homes in Riverdale.

The mansions — a stone’s throw from the childhood home of singing star Carly Simon and within shouting distance of Christina Aguilera’s fatherin- law — are being marketed to the rich and famous, with the Villanova Heights Web site offering high-quality living to “the most demanding of A-List clients” and 24-hour security for “famous clients who may be targets of the media and want to maintain a low profile.”

Both completed homes are packed with pricey features like white oak floors, double staircases and swimming pools. They are sprawling and luxurious, with closets as big as some New York City studio apartments.

Their road to completion was long and difficult. Villanova Heights has been the subject of fierce neighborhood battles since 1990, when developer John Fitzgerald purchased the once-forested area, known as Chapel Farms, from Manhattan College.

First, the Fieldston Property Owners Association would not allow Mr. Fitzgerald to route his construction vehicles through the community’s private streets. Then the City Council and the city Department of Environmental Protection derailed construction in 2000 because of concerns about drainage. A series of lawsuits ensued, with Mr. Fitzgerald taking both Community Board 8 and the Fieldston Property Owners Association to Federal Court. The cases were dismissed. Mr. Fitzgerald didn’t win the right to build on his property until 2004.

He then had to contend with serious flooding issues. Neighbors complained that despite his efforts to engineer a solution to the drainage problems, runoff from his property continued to flood their homes. Storm water dry wells seem to have fixed the problem, the developer said.

Mr. Stern’s firm joined the project in 2006, and framing already begun on two homes was torn down to their foundations to accommodate his new designs.

Mr. Fitzgerald said the common complaints about Villanova Heights — that the homes are too big or built on plots of land that are too small — are being voiced less and less.

“I think most people are relatively relieved at the types of homes that we’re building,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “We’ve had an awful lot of people tell us this is beautiful and they don’t know why this was ever being fought.”

The mansions’ size still bothers some Fieldston residents, who fear they are out of step with the appearance of the Tudors and colonials in the exclusive neighborhood, many of which were designed by Dwight James Baum.

“Whether or not you like the size of the houses, they are very, very, very big and dwarf everything else in the neighborhood,” said Charles Moerdler, chairman of the Community Board 8’s land use committee and former commissioner of the city’s buildings department, who said complaints from locals have indeed diminished. “It does have some wonderful advantages in terms of providing people the opportunity to have a McMansion, but I’m not sure that’s what the area was designed for.”

Mr. Moerdler said he prefers smaller houses, but now that Villanova Heights has become a reality, he wants to see it succeed.

“Let’s see if the houses sell,” he said. “I hope they do. The last thing we need is for the job not to get finished.”

Plans call for a total of up to 16 homes between 10,000 and 15,000 square feet at Villanova Heights, all designed by Mr. Stern and Mr. Brewer, who also designed the Perkins Visitor Center at Wave Hill.

The price tag for the two newly completed homes: $11.2 and $11.9 million.

This is part of the June 18, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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