The
rich, American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “are
different than you and me.”
The first linking of that comes
when the concierge at the Kingswood Shaughnessy, arguably “the
premier uptown address” in Vancouver, hands you surgical slippers
and asks you to put them on before embarking on a tour.
The
Kingswood, the 18-suite “magnificent obsession” of developer Lorne
Segal, royally occupies three-quarters of the city block at the
southeast corner of Fir Street and 14th Avenue in Vancouver.
The prices are fit for royalty, too, varying from $1.4 million to
more than $6 million for the penthouse with commanding views of the
city, outdoor kitchen, rooftop hot tub and jet pool.
The
residences range from 2,066 to more than 6,000 square feet.
The place oozes money well spent. But it also exudes charm, elegance
and space, and is a virtual gallery of painstaking craftsmanship, a
quality very rarely seen these days.
Hardly surprising, given
that Segal took five years to plan and three years to construct his
palace. Along the way, he consulted with 37 architects and employed
hundreds of artisans. Still Segal wont’ discuss the total cost of
his creation.
What he will say is that the suites, which
prefers to call “a collection of custom homes,” are about to be
thrown on to the world stage under the baton of downtown property
king Bob Rennie. One residence already has sold and two are under
offer.
Rennie says the Kingswood - which is being quietly
marketed simultaneously in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and
Vancouver - couldn’t be sold prior to completion because it would
have been impossible for the buyer to see “the quality that is being
delivered here.”
Why no advertising in Europe?
“Europeans read the New York Times,” Rennie responds.
Rennie
also believes local buyers will be attracted to the building.
Segal, 45, president of Kingswood Properties Ltd., nurtured his
dreams while reading law at Oxford. He believes he’s created one of
the finest residential towers in the world and unquestionably the
finest in Vancouver.
“I’m satisfying the demand for this
class of buyer that doesn’t want to live downtown,” Segal says.
It’s a unique addition to the landscape that likely won’t be
seen again. After all, where else would you find an underground
garage designed with cherrywood paneling, marble slab floor and a
glass-enclosed waiting room with gas fireplace and seats where
guests can wait for their chauffeured vehicles?
Artisans set
up stone and marble-cutting mills on site as did the metal craftsmen
who cut, bent and soldered diamond-shaped titanium zinc shingles for
the cupola, canopies and bay windows.
Marble floors were cut
with water jets to allow precision inlays, and an Italian artist was
brought in to hand-paint a three-dimensional floral pattern on the
entry’s barrel-vaulted ceilings.
Huge curved glass panels
cover the exterior of the building’s turrets and withstood wind
tests of 240 km/h.
His and her bathrooms gleam with 24-karat
gold-plated fixtures and the whole development is cloaked in superb
gardens.
The wealthy, understandably, place security high on
their list when property-shopping.
The Kingswood, a
multimillion-dollar residential development built for the wealthy,
has it in spades:
Perimeter intrusion detection system;
Coded front gate;
Underground entrances and lobby doors are
remotely controlled by a concierge on duty around the clock;
Concierge controls a battery of detection and
camera video surveillance apparatus;
Private lobbies have motion sensors;
Zone security systems in all suites and private
lobbies;
Garage has a personal safety system activated by
a fob key, plus closed-circuit TV monitoring.
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