Making Winnipesaukee a more golden pond
Sprawling mansions displacing many of the old, quaint cottages
MOULTONBOROUGH, N.H. - One of the newest additions to a wooded cove on New Hampshire's great lake is an 8,000-square-foot faux-stone and timber-fronted house, wanting for little. It has an elevator, three washer-dryer sets (one per floor), three dishwashers (two in the kitchen and one in the wet bar), a gym framed by mahogany crown moldings, heated Italian tumbled-marble bathroom walls and floors, and a custom wine cellar with slots sized for regular bottles and magnums.
It is expected to fetch $5 million - maybe more.
"Cost," said Joe Skiffington, the property's developer, who sold five similar houses last year as second, third, and fourth homes, "is not a factor for the people buying."
Long known for thrill-seeking boaters, arcades, and nighttime firework displays that drown out the calls of the loons, Lake Winnipesaukee in the last decade has become an increasingly favored spot of corporate high-flyers and self-made entrepreneurs. Where its shoreline once teemed with rustic camps built by the salaried middle class for summer use, year-round mansions now rise in their place, monuments to the lake's growing cadre of moneyed arrivals.
To some, the transformation has brought panache and architectural beauty, along with buckets of money for the lakeside towns that rely heavily on property tax to fund schools and local operations. But others charge it has imported a spirit of material excess, further distancing Winnipesaukee from other more restrained New England vacation spots, such as shingled Nantucket, lock-jawed Osterville, or "On Golden Pond" Squam Lake.
"There is a whole lot of money," said Stephen Hodecker, an artist who has lived in lakeside Meredith for 40 years. "But not a whole lot of taste."
The new homes - dubbed "Adirondack castles" by critics - dot the 200-mile shoreline, sprouting in many of the lake's bordering towns. Gilford has drawn buyers who own airplanes and want proximity to the local airstrip; Moultonborough's parcels have been snapped up by others seeking forested privacy; even Wolfeboro, the lake's old money town, has been affected, with old homes there giving way to larger new ones, realtors say.
Of the estimated 10,000 homes that ring the shoreline, some 1,000 of them are new sprawling houses, built on the sites of onetime camps, according to Russ Thibeault, president of Applied Economic Research in Laconia who has studied New Hampshire's Lakes Region. In the last 18 months, the median sales price of property on the lake was $950,000. He said home sales and prices on the lake have remained steady, despite the real estate slump that has devastated housing prices across the country.
The lake has become a destination for luminaries like President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, who last summer rented the 22,000 square-foot home of Mike Appe, a former
Still, the growing ranks of the rich have done little to tamp down the raucous tenor of lake pastimes. A headline event of the summer remains Motorcycle Week, drawing thousands of bikers from across the country around the lake's byways. Summer days on the lake are filled with the roar of performance boat engines and the whine of Jet Skis. Weirs Beach, at the lake's southern tip, draws comers from across the region with its tattoo parlors, water slides, drive-in movie theater, and thoroughfares perfect for cruising. Meanwhile, new additions include the Town Docks, an upscale but rollicking restaurant with free boat tie-ups and live music at its "Tiki Bar."
Realtors say the lake's liveliness is a prime attraction for newcomers. "They want to go to dinner by boat, get ice cream by boat," said Susan Bradley, a realtor who has brokered many of the sales on Governor's Island, a premier destination on the lake. "They want great recreation - water sports of all kinds - and they want a beautiful body of water."
Bradley and other realtors say their clients are mostly Boston-area residents, but a growing number, some 20 percent, are from places like the West Coast and Florida. Many are money managers and entrepreneurs in their mid-40s to early 50s, with school-age children, who use the homes year-round, for water sports in the summer and skiing in the winter.
John Mooney of Lexington, founder of M/C Communications, a Boston-based medical education company, recently bought two lots on Governor's Island, tore down homes, and built a 6,000-square-foot house and a 3,000-square-foot guest house.
He keeps a 26-foot power boat, Jet Skis, a sailboat, and several kayaks. Mooney said he rented a home on Cape Cod for years, but ultimately returned to Lake Winnipesaukee, where he had spent summers as a child.
"I want to give my daughter the same experiences I had," Mooney said.
At the other side of the lake, in Moultonborough, a retired lawyer who lived in Weston for many years, and who asked that his name not be used because he wants to keep a low profile, said he built a $4.2 million, 8,000-square-foot lakeside home, with eight bedrooms, including three in the grandchildren's "bunk room" above the garage, as a gathering spot for his family. He said that his home is large, but he said, "it suits the landscape so beautifully that we didn't envision it interfering with people's sense of aesthetics up here."
Some agree. "The [newcomers] have brought wealth and beautified the area," said state Representative Bruce Heald, a Republican of Meredith, who has written several books about the history of Lake Winnipesaukee.
Heald said the newcomers are paying thousands of dollars in property tax and have propelled the starts of a slew of new businesses, especially home maintenance firms, caterers, and restaurants.
Cheryl Scott, for one, opened her interior design firm three years ago.
She said that while many of the newcomers import designers from Boston, enough hire locally, keeping her busy styling homes with favored Lake Winnipesaukee trimmings: raw silk curtains, wrought-iron chandeliers, and invariably a splash of plaid for a "country casual" style.
"It's about being lakey-looking," she said. 