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GWINNETT ANNUAL REPORT

Livin' large
County offers more bang for big bucks when building a dream house

By BRIAN FEAGANS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/22/04

Putting a human face on Gwinnett's newfound luxury home market is easy. His name is Brian Willis.
 
CHARLOTTE B. TEAGLE/AJC STAFF
Most houses in the Legends section of Château Élan, where lots alone cost almost $400,000, are being bought by Gwinnett residents, according to a Château Élan executive.
 
T. LEVETTE BAGWELL/AJC STAFF
The Willis home's master bath is in a two-story master suite. The house has six bedrooms, a dozen plasma TVs and seven garages.
 
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Willis, 43, has gone from firefighter to millionaire builder by constructing mansions exclusively in Gwinnett. And he has done it largely since 2000.
 
"Gwinnett is just starting to get into the higher end," Willis said from his six-bedroom home in the exclusive Château Élan community near Braselton. "I think I hit it just right, right as the Mall of Georgia was being built."
 
Willis' own $2.5 million home provides a snapshot of the lavish lifestyles taking root in Gwinnett. The brick-and-stone behemoth boasts a dozen plasma TVs, a seven-car garage complex and a two-story master suite with bedroom-sized closets.
 
You can test your skills at pool, play at a blackjack table, lift weights, go for a swim, hit the sauna, watch a movie in theater style, practice putting and relax by an outdoor fireplace — all without ever leaving the bottom floor.
 
It's not the picture most people have of Gwinnett, which has earned a reputation as metro Atlanta's affordable housing leader. But a peek behind the gated entrances spreading across the county reveals a small but fast-growing mansion market.
 
Builders broke ground last year on 423 homes in Gwinnett worth more than $450,000, according to data provided by American Metro/Study Corp. That's nearly double the 236 houses that went up in that price range during 2000.
 
Fifty of the homes constructed in 2003 were worth at least $1 million, up from 33 in 2000, according to Houston-based Metro/Study.
 
Pro athletes and young entrepreneurs are driving Gwinnett's megamansion market, Willis said, joining successful older couples who have saved to build their dream house.
 
Elevators, pools, gourmet kitchens and home theaters are simply a way of life in neighborhoods such as the Sugarloaf Country Club, Sweet Bottom Plantation, the River Club and Château Élan, which sits largely in Gwinnett but has entrances and a winery in neighboring Barrow County. There you'll find some of the county's wealthiest residents sleeping under the same roof as art galleries, in-home spas, wine cellars and skating rinks.
 
The comforts of home
 
Willis, his wife and their two daughters moved into their four-story home in December. It sits in a gated community within a gated community and has all the usual amenities — Brazilian cherry hardwood floors, a gourmet kitchen, an elevator and pool/hot tub complex out back. Six bedrooms. Six-and-a-half baths.
 
Then there are the customized features.
 
Plasma TVs are everywhere from the angled ceiling in the master bedroom to above one of the urinals. That doesn't even include the 6-foot screen in the 12-seat home theater. Rumblers under the seats provide that right-next-to-the-car-crash feeling.
 
Got the munchies? No problem. A light-up concession window, just like the kind at the movies, is stocked with boxes of Goobers and Raisinettes.
 
Dozens of testosterone-laced features explain why Willis is popular among Atlanta Falcons players.
 
The weight room's panoramic windows look out onto the pool and golf course. So does the circular game room, complete with blackjack and poker tables.
 
Behind a giant wet bar is the kind of beer fridge normally reserved for restaurants. The bar faces a billiards room with a jukebox and arcade machines.
 
Signed football jerseys (from Joe Namath's No. 12 to Keith Brookings' No. 56), baseballs and other sports paraphernalia abound. A sword used on the set of "Braveheart" is in one corner. Posters from each of the "Terminator" movies carry the signature of California's new governor.
 
Garages that pop out from all angles of the house contain space for seven cars. Willis likes to park his Hummer in the garage with its own urinal.
 
Throw in a piano room, a two-story master suite, a hidden safe room with a vaultlike door, a putting green, an outdoor fireplace, a giant patio, several porches — well, you get the picture — and you're looking at a fully loaded $2.5 million mansion one hour from Atlanta.
 
And when you're putting that kind of money into a house, going the extra distance to avoid charred spots on grilled hot dogs is a no-brainer. The pool house has a built-in hot-dog broiler.
 
"I don't like the little black marks on them," Willis said.
 
Willis has plenty of company in the Legends section of Château Élan, where lots alone can run nearly $400,000. Down Legends Drive is a European-style stucco house listed at $2.45 million. Highlights include four oversized guest rooms and a terrace level complete with children's playroom and skating area.
 
Philip Mulherin, vice president of development at Château Élan, said few out-of-state license plates are pulling up to the new luxury homes. In fact, he estimates that 85 percent of the buyers are Gwinnett-area residents looking to move up. And many have families.
 
"It's a younger and younger buyer," he said. "Almost exclusively our million-dollar buyers were 35- to 45-year-olds."
 
The resort community, which is about a quarter of the way through its 2,000-house master plan, had $67 million in sales last year, compared with $37 million in 2002, Mulherin said.
 
One house, 20 baths
 
Even more evidence that Gwinnett is fertile ground for mansions is just beyond the laurel-and-cedar-twig gate at the River Club near Suwanee. A 620-acre golf course community is rapidly rising on the banks of the Chattahoochee. Roughly 400 estate-sized lots wrap around a Greg Norman-designed golf course.
 
Prices are expected to range from $800,000 to $5 million.
 
The gated neighborhood off Moore Road rubs shoulders with the home that sets the standard for Gwinnett mansions. The 30,000-square-foot house built by furniture tycoon Sherwin Glass has 11 bedrooms, 20 baths, Versailles-patterned hardwood floors, a billiards room, a racquetball court and an elevator. Georgia Force owner and Gwinnett businessman Virgil Williams bought the 32-acre estate for $7 million in 2001.
 
The River Club is the latest Gwinnett venture by Crescent Resources, a unit of Duke Energy.
 
Crescent initially tapped into a pent-up demand for upscale housing in Gwinnett when it opened the Sugarloaf Country Club in 1997. The community near Sugarloaf Parkway and I-85 has smaller lots but is centrally located for the county's corporate set. Homes average roughly $1 million.
 
Gwinnett even has its own haunted mansion. Special-effects guru Mark Hurt has built an 11,000-square-foot replica of Disney's famous Haunted Mansion, featured in theme parks around the world.
 
The antebellum-style home sits in the Sweet Bottom Plantation neighborhood, which runs along the Chattahoochee south of Pleasant Hill Road.
 
The dimensions and architectural details of Hurt's home are the same as those of the Haunted Mansion, from the four giant columns on the front porch to the quarter-size urn embellishing the brass trim ring around the keyhole. The wrought-iron fencing adorning the front terrace came from the Alabama foundry that Walt Disney used for the original Haunted Mansion.
 
Luckily for Hurt, Sweet Bottom Plantation has authentic homes from famous Southern cities such as Charleston and Savannah. The Haunted Mansion is in the neighborhood's New Orleans-style "Garden District."
 
Six bedrooms, one hose
 
Unlike Hurt, most of Gwinnett's wealthy aren't designing and building their own homes. That's where Willis comes in.
 
It's hard to believe how quickly the former DeKalb County firefighter has made his riches. Willis' daughter, Brooke, though only 10 years old, can remember when her daddy came home from the Clarkston fire station "smelling funny."
 
Willis said his formula for success is simple: Gwinnett's time has come for high-end housing, and that's all he's building. Willis' company, BLW Home Group, has constructed roughly 30 luxury homes in the past three years alone, he said.
 
"In Buckhead, $1 million can get you a 2,400-square-foot town-home," Willis said. "Out here, you spend that much for a 6,000-square-foot-home on a golf course."
 
New-home construction also is attractive to those who want to incorporate their own special tastes and quirks.
 
Willis is no exception.
 
One of his favorite features is in the laundry room. There, behind a tiny square door, is a 50-foot-long fire hose.
 

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