BUYER: Oprah Winfrey
LOCATION: Telluride, CO
PRICE: $14,000,000
SIZE: 8,706 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 6.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Although this property gossip can’t imagine she actually straps waxed sticks to her feet and slides down a snowy mountain, Oprah Winfrey has, just in time for the winter ski season, added a $14,000,000 ski chalet in the Mountain Village area of Telluride, CO, to her already impressively tumescent property portfolio. Originally listed in late 2009 at $15 million, the privately sited residence was re-listed in June 2014 at $13.75 million and removed from the open market in September of this year. Presumably the property, sold fully furnished, was acquired by the billionaire media tycoon as a ready-made place to shack up when she’s in town to oversee the construction of a custom estate on a nearby 66-acre undeveloped tract she scooped up in March 2014 for $10.85 million.
Set on 3.23, densely wooded hillside acres, the stone, glass and wood structure is a decidedly contemporary take on a classic, faux-rustic Rocky Mountain ski chalet and measures in at a considerable if not exactly mega 8,706 square feet with five bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms. Custom built for the seller, tech executive Bob Wall, and completed in 2001, the sturdy-looking three-story residence is outfitted with an avalanche of high-tech luxuries and a raft of whackadoodle amenities that includes Finnish-style spa and a heated driveway and motor court that makes access easy even under the snowiest of conditions. An unusually comprehensive home automation system that can be operated by smart phone from anywhere in the world, incorporates 40 miles of wiring and controls heating, cooling and security systems, window coverings, and even the watering and fertilization of indoor plants. The primary living spaces include a double-height living room with wood burning fireplace, formal dining room, sky-lit eat-in kitchen, and a family room that quickly converts to a screening room with motorized black out shades and a screen that drop down out of the ceiling. A tempered glass bridge with integrated fiber optic lighting system — installed at a cost of $150,000 — links a private office to the master suite where a custom-crafted, $70,000 jetted tub automatically recirculates water through a heating panel so the water temperature remains consistent for the entire bath. Instead of a regular ol’ wine cellar like every other rich person has, the seller opted for a Disney-esque wine tunnel elaborately decked out like an authentic mining shaft complete with rugged wood beams, lantern light fixtures, and a sound system that pipes in the sounds of creaking timber and dripping water. A 45-foot bridge, installed with the help of a helicopter at a cost of $140,000, zigzags from the house, through the tree tops to an elevated terrace 35-feet above the ground while a mining tram-style funicular, installed at a cost of nearly a quarter million dollars, effortlessly ferries skiers down the steep slope behind the house to one of the many ski runs that crisscross the area.
Unquestionably a real estate baller of the highest order, the still immensely popular former talk show host presides over a plethora of private residences that, in addition to several fairly modest homes in and around Nashville that were, we presume without any real knowledge, purchased for family and/or friends, include a “The Promised Land,” a 42-acre landscaped estate with a 23,000-square-foot neo-Georgian mansion in high-toned Montecito, CA, that she purchased in 2001 for around $50 million; a four-unit combination penthouse atop the Water Tower Place complex in downtown Chicago that she’s owned for decades; and a vast, 800-plus-acre working farm near Kula on the Hawaiian island of Maui acquired in at least a dozen transactions starting in about 2003 at a total outlay of more than $44 million.
Listing photos: via Concierge Auctions
