Federal Way's Luxury Houses -- Area Has Been Discovered By More Affluent Home Buyers

FEDERAL WAY

Call it the Gold Coast.

Call it young Bellevue.

Call it home for luxurious million-dollar-plus homes that dot the bluffs and shorelines. These are homes with indoor swimming pools and helicopter landing pads, all located in or near Federal Way.

Not long ago, the venerable waterfront Redondo Castle that J.C. Penney partner Ben Westland finished in 1938 was the sole symbol of gracious living in South King County.

Today, mansions of 8,000- to 9,000-square-feet and seven-digit price tags are becoming more common. They're often custom built, in small exclusive developments or on individual lots, and the common denominator is maximum luxury and scenery - and sometimes ownership by young couples who've worked hard and invested well.

While 20 years ago the Twin Lakes Golf and Country Club development offered the poshest living south of Seattle, its houses (which sell from $135,000 to about $235,000) now seem comfortable but not extraordinary.

Even the famed castle - which sold for $1.2 million in June 1989 - with its 6,600 square feet and 1.9 acres, is small compared with some of the newer homes.

Steve and Kerry Brewer's Lake Dolloff home has 8,168 square feet on just over six acres - enough room for their Bell helicopter to take off and land when Steve doesn't want to drive to wilderness areas for hunting.

An insurance executive is building a 9,000-square-foot, stucco

home on a bluff near Redondo, large enough to accommodate both tended and wild gardens and an orchard. The landscaping for the estate, which includes the beachfront property below the house, is being done by Thomas Berger and Associates landscape architects for Seattle's Two Union Square.

While the estate's owners won't disclose the cost, one of the architects says it is between $1 million and $2 million.

A highly visible, three-story mansion just off First Avenue South, near Redondo, is the future 8,500-square-foot home of Mono and Yik Song. He's a Boeing machinist; she's a social services caseworker. They bought the view lot for $90,000 several years ago and are building the stately home themselves out of their own pocket.

Why are so many people building such large houses?

The reason: The rising cost of real estate, says 36-year-old Puyallup High School graduate Jerry Mahan, who developed Redondo Ridge, the street of prime view lots that includes the Songs' property.

The lots he sold for $100,000 an acre three years ago now sell for $250,000 an acre, he says.

Whenever you have property values going up, combined with new construction, the trend is to maximize the potential profit from the property.

``If you have a $50,000 lot, you build a $200,000 to $250,000 house,'' he said. ``If you have a $25,000 lot, you build a $50,000 to $100,000 house.''

The profit margin of selling a small house on a spectacular lot is not as good, he says, as building a large structure, equipped with the luxury items - skylights, media rooms, grand master suites with bathtubs the size of small swimming pools - of which dream homes are made.

Despite the estate home's popularity now, architects and developers predict the turn of the century will bring smaller, energy-efficient, single-family homes, in response to the influx of an estimated 240,000 new residents to King County's suburbs.

About 1.2 million of the county's 1.7 million population will live in suburban communities within 10 years, according to the Puget Sound Council of Governments.

Until then, South King County is among the remaining places where large lots of prime real estate are still available.

``It's the young Bellevue,'' Mahan said of Federal Way. ``It's close to the water, and anytime you're close to the water, people want to build there.''

Also desirable is its close access to Seattle and Tacoma via nearby Interstate 5.

``For a long time, Federal Way was the best-kept secret. Then it got discovered,'' said Mahan, who with his wife, Kristie, is building his own estate, a 5,000-square-foot home on one waterfront acre near Redondo.

The Brewers - who are in their late '30s and made their fortune in asbestos removal and asphalt firms - built their three-story brick home beyond iron gates along Military Road, out of pocket.

The home just sold for more than $1.14 million.

It was the first property the couple - he's 37 and she's 38 - bought. And, along with the helicopter-launching area, it features an indoor pool, a fountain in the foyer, marble floors, a 24-karat gold chandelier in the dining room, marble tubs, eight-car garage, sweeping lawns, lake view and 1,200-square-foot master suite.

``We didn't feel it would cost that much more to build it large,'' Steve said. ``We didn't like the small rooms in the `Street of Dreams' houses.''

The Brewers drew their own plans and ``just hired someone to draw it accurately so the county would pass it.''

They were cautioned that the house was out of place in the neighborhood of modest homes, but when it came time to sell, the Brewer estate was on the market for little more than a month.

Having sold their businesses and the house, and with their daughter grown, they are planning to move to the West Indies, buy property there and relax.

Mono Song, 36, is doing anything but relax as he works daily on his house after his graveyard shift at Boeing.

``I've had to work hard for what I wanted,'' said Song, who came from Cambodia in 1975.

He anticipates completing by Christmas what's become one of the Redondo area's most prominent and visible houses. He began work on it last July. And when he, his wife, 8-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter move in, their dream home will have five bedrooms, and individual rooms for exercise, computers and music.

Extra rooms with top-quality building materials such as marble and hardwoods are often features of the large South King County and Pierce County homes custom-built by Erv Wicklund.

Wicklund was the contractor for J.Z. Knight's 22,000-square-foot Yelm house and just completed renovating an 8,000-square-foot, older Gravelly Lake Drive home for actress Linda Evans.

As the estate-home trend pushes into Pierce County, he's also building a 6,000-square-foot home near Lake Tapps for a Boeing executive. The home will have a four-car garage, private air strip and an airplane hangar attached to the house. He also built a large, waterfront Redondo home with a heating system designed to make use of water from the swimming pool.

``There's no doubt about it,'' he said. ``People building nowadays are more into quality, especially as the lot prices go up.''

The owner of the 9,000-square-foot stucco home being built on a bluff near Redondo wanted quality, quiet, a panoramic view and privacy.

``It's hard to find pieces of property anyplace else,'' said Erica Hamer, one of the principal architects for the project.

Although the estate will feature a lap pool, multiple terraces and a fountain at the center of a circular driveway, the family of five ``didn't want to feel like they were living in a mansion,'' Hamer said. So the house was designed in five different modules, ``to help it blend into the neighborhood.''

Yet, when the distinctive peaks of palatial new construction jut into the blue-gray skyline to capture prime views, it's hard for neighbors not to notice.

There wasn't much in the way of grand homes when Evelyn Cissna lived at the castle with her attorney husband, Jack, and their children from 1953 to 1975. In fact, the Cissnas made a personal campaign of talking up Federal Way's scenic beauty - numerous small lakes and Puget Sound shoreline.

Routinely, when guests came to visit, the Cissnas - who moved there from Queen Anne Hill - would show them photographs of the countryside.

``There's so much beauty there with Mount Rainier just sitting there looking at you,'' Evelyn Cissna said. ``I can see why people would want to build there.''

JoAnne Thompson, who has lived most of her 64 years in a cozy, waterfront beach cottage nearby, is philosophical. While the occupants of some of the area's newest, priciest homes ``are nice,'' she hopes the Young Bellevue trend won't raise her taxes.

``When I went down to San Francisco, I thought, `This is how Redondo will look someday.' But look how soon it's come! There is so little of the Sound left,'' she said.