Shares of Queen Anne for sale

Couple offers ownership in Eureka Springs mansion to 24

Friday, November 23, 2012

One of Eureka Springs’ most famous homes is being sold but not in the traditional way.

If all goes according to plan, the Queen Anne Mansion at 115 W. Van Buren St. will have 82 owners.

Steve and Lata Lovell, current owners of the four-story, 12,000-square-foot mansion, said the house will become a time-shared private residence club. Ownership interests will be in the Queen Anne Mansion Preservation Trust Inc.

The first 12 shares are being offered at $150,000 each. After that, the price will likelygo up for the next 12 shares, said Beth Kikoen, operations manager for the mansion.

After deposits have been made by those 24 shareholders, the deal will close, and the Lovells will underwrite the cost of operations until the remaining shares are sold.

“My initial decision was driven by my desire to see this property held to a higher standard for the long-term, not just while my wife and I own it but for generations to come,” said Steve Lovell, who recently turned 65.

The share prices provide an ownership interest in perpetuity. Owners can sell theirshares or pass them down to heirs. In addition to the share prices, there also will be a monthly fee for maintenance and services, initially $694 per month, said Kikoen.

Steve Lovell said he didn’t want to sell the house to a single owner.

“A single-owner model will last as long as that owner is able to run the business,” he said. “It left me feeling vulnerable to the next owner. Hopefully what we’re doing will ensure the long-term preservation. ... If I look forward 20 years, obviously I’m not going to be in a position personally to ensure that the property will be preserved. My heirsmay not have as much enthusiasm about keeping the property up as I do.”

David Harries, who handles marketing for the Queen Anne, said ownership interests in the house won’t be advertised. Instead, he is identifying people who might be interested in buying a share.

Steve Lovell said he and his wife will keep one or two of the shares. The Lovells live in St. Augustine, Fla., and also have a home in Williamsburg, Va. They plan to use the Queen Anne Mansion as a vacation home.

The house has seven private suites. Each owner willhave a right to a minimum of 28 nights in the mansion each year, in seven-night blocks. Owners may reserve a single suite, multiple suites or the entire house, with each suite counting as a night’s usage.

The mansion has been a home, a bed-and-breakfast inn and a museum.

The house was built in 1891 in Carthage, Mo., a lead and zinc mining town that grew in the 1870s from the ashes of the Civil War. Initial cost for construction of it was $21,500, which would be about $500,000 today based on inflation.

The 29-room mansion was the home of Curtis Wright, a Union veteran of the Civil War and mining industry businessman who was a distant cousin of aviation pioneers Orville and Wilbur Wright.

Kikoen said Wright’s visitors at the home included William “Buffalo Bill” Cody and Harold Bell Wright. Cody was a frontiersman, soldier and professional bison hunter who claimed to have killed 4,280 buffalo in 17 months, according to a PBS biography. Harold Bell Wright, another cousin to Curtis Wright, was one of the best-known novelists of the early 20th century.

Curtis Wright lost his fortune and had to give the house back to pay taxes on it, Kikoen said. According to a 1988 article in OzarksWatch magazine, the house had four owners over the next 80 years.

The house was vacant and was close to being razed for a funeral-home parking lot, when Ron Evans saw the “for sale” sign out front in 1981, according to the article by Nancy Jane Sneed.

Ron and Mary Evans of Kansas City, Mo., bought the house with the understanding that it would be moved to Eureka Springs, where the couple already owned property and an 1888 Victorian cottage. Kikoen said the Evanses paid $160,000 for the mansion and spent another $500,000 to move it.

In 1984, the Evanses had the house dismantled and taken piece by piece to Eureka Springs, 86 miles away. It was reassembled next to the house the couple already owned.

Queen Anne was an American architectural style that was popular from the 1880s through 1910. It is considered a subset of Victorian architecture. Queen Anne architecture includes ornate features, bright colors, asymmetrical roof lines, wraparound porches, balconies, turrets, gables, a mix of different textures and carved stone accents.

Kikoen said the Evanses did extensive renovations, adding several modern bathrooms to the house, which had only one.

The Evanses operated thehouse as a bed-and-breakfast until 2005, when they sold the property to Steve and Lata Lovell of Chicago for $1.16 million, according to Carroll County property records.

The Lovells closed the inn so they could renovate the house. It reopened in May 2011 as a museum. They furnished the house with antique items from the turn of the century. Those items will be replaced with authentic looking replicas of the era, Steve Lovell said.

“We’re going from a museum where people look and don’t touch to going to a residence club where people actually use the furniture,” he said.

Lovell said he sees the mansion, which is at U.S. 62 and Arkansas 23, as the “gateway to downtown Eureka Springs.” For many visitors to the tourist town, it’s the first Victorian building they see before turning on Spring Street (which is also Arkansas 23) to head downtown.

“It’s one of the center points of town,” said Mayor Morris Pate. “It’s right there at one of our busiest intersections.”

Lovell said the upstairs portion of the 1888 cottage, known as the Kelley house, is a private spa that can be used by the owners of the Queen Anne. On-site management lives on the first floor of the Kelley house.

Maid service will be provided at the Queen Anne Mansion. A hot breakfast will be served daily, as well as dinner on Sundays and cocktails on Friday nights, said Kikoen. Other amenities will be provided for a fee.

The Queen Anne Mansion, Kelley house and 0.67 acres of real estate have a market value of about $1.55 million, said Jeannie Davidson, deputy assessor for Carroll County.

Joe McClung Sr., a real estate expert in Eureka Springs, said the property is worth at least twice that.

“God Almighty, if you realize what’s there ...” said Mc-Clung. “I’d say that property in my opinion would appraise between $3 million and $4 million. There’s nothing to compare it with in the state of Arkansas.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 12 on 11/23/2012