For This Park Lane Estate, Time Marches On Beautifully

I remember the moment we first saw 5511 Park Lane. We were shopping for a new home in 1989, a bigger footprint than our 3,000-square-foot ranch on Melissa Lane. We combed our favorite neighborhood, the honeypot of Old Preston Hollow, which we had fallen in love with the first day we stumbled upon it.

The appeal was huge. We love large yards and trees, and the area reminded us of our respective family homes up north — my family’s in East Dundee, Illinois, with a feel of St. Charles and Dunham Woods thrown in, and my husband’s in Warwick, New York, near Tuxedo Park. Old Preston Hollow was about as far away from modern Dallas as you could get in topography and architecture then, but it was within walking distance of Preston Center.

We did not think we could afford 5511 Park Lane. The older, elegant white brick home was set back upon a large, leafy corner lot — at least an acre. There was a “For Sale” sign, yet I told my husband: “Oh, we cannot afford that house!”

We had been married only nine years, had two children, a dog, and a bird. The home was listed for — yelp! — $1 million!

But we took a gander anyhow.

The house was a 1936 New Orleans-style colonial with a wrought-iron balcony off the front upper bedroom, and a gorgeous glass garden room off the living room featuring beautiful green clay tiles.

The house had a small kitchen that appeared to have been added to the back of the house with little built-in storage and one oven. I already had two. The huge breakfast room had an expansive bay window overlooking the swimming pool and the verdant property, which my husband was already in love with.

The family room was a step-down on a slab (that I believe was once a car port), leading to the garage and — where was the laundry room? Oh, in a closet right off the garage. A closet laundry for a 4,500-square-foot home? The family room and three-car garage had been added on, with no effort to match the tasteful moldings of the original home. Upstairs, over the added-on family room, was an added-on master bedroom with a fireplace, two small closets, and a corner bathroom overlooking the grounds.

You stepped up to the master bath like an altar. I liked the soaking tub and large shower next to it with two heads. The steps would be a pain maybe for getting to the potty quickly at night, but the step down effect to the bedroom was elegant … for about five seconds.

The main house had three bedrooms, each small with 1930s-era closets. The Jack-and-Jill bath was charming original black-and-white tiles mudded in and the tiny guest bath off the third bedroom (with no closet at all!) was new.

Over the three-car garage was a giant, unfinished space called “future gameroom.”

The house didn’t impress me, and I could see why it would be a problem child to sell. But the property, the pool, the trees — they were the most spectacular we had seen.

The windows were the original single-pane, wood mullion double hungs in the older home with thin commercial metal windows in the addition similar to those you find in Class C apartments. We found out the owner was in commercial real estate and trying to flip the house because the real estate market had crashed. We made a ridiculously low offer and got the house.

We lived in that home, with all its wrinkles, for close to 10 years. My kids, 4 and 7 when we moved in, still call it the greatest house ever. We added a spa to the swimming pool, and until the game room over the garage was finished out, the kids rode giant plastic lids down the back stairway. The crate from a sonogram machine became a tree house. We acquired more dogs and added on a large laundry room and what we have always called a “pool bath.” We linked the newly finished game room to our master, creating a giant closet for my husband with access to those back stairs for his emergency hospital runs.

One day while changing the parrot cage, I glanced at the newspaper where she had just pooped: Great 9 percent interest rate loans at a new bank in town called Compass. “Hmm,” I said, “maybe we need a tennis court!”

We got a tennis court, and we played, we entertained, we enjoyed every blade of grass on that lawn from the huge right of way on Hollow Way to the iron fence on the east side where one of our Goldens, Bessie, got her head stuck while we were in church. Family photos took place in the grass, under the huge trees, even under the one that eventually fell on my son’s bedroom.

Still, I wanted something else. Remodel? Every architect in town came over and told me the house had to go. It had been “re-muddled”. I wanted to retain a few body parts, and build anew.

But we were advised to capture the equity, and build elsewhere.

Because of the market in 1996-1997, it was a difficult sell. We almost said, forget it. We were tired of open houses and uncertainty, and my oldest was inching near her senior year. We had our last agent, recommended by a savvy friend, and I made it crystal clear that if we did not get our price in three months, I was shutting down the sale process.

That agent was Dave Perry-Miller and his assistant, Kathy Finn.

Let me tell you, I was a client from hell. In fact, Dave says he asked Kathy before she retired which property involved the hardest negotiations.

Candy Evans’ house at 5511 Park Lane, she said.

Dave: “We need to show the house, really great prospect.”

Candy: “No can do, we are having a Hockaday swim party.”

Dave: “We have an offer that is REALLY close …”

Candy: “Is it Candy’s magic number? If not, I don’t want to see it.”

“I knew that we were either going to become very dear friends or mortal enemies at the end of this listing,” said Perry-Miller. “I kid you not, the file folder for 5511 Park Lane was the biggest house file in my real estate career.”

Finally, as tech began to mint new millionaires, we got a solid cash buyer— a young couple from Southlake — price very close. We agreed on an amazingly long period ’till possession. But I was still not happy.

I called Perry-Miller and asked him to get me OUT of the contract.

I’m not selling this house, I said. We have too much stuff. I cannot even OPEN the closets in the game room without an avalanche.

We did close on 5511 Park Lane in 1999. We moved to a rental house (another story!) and built our current home. But I have always wondered what if I had just ignored the experts and torn that house down and built my dream house on that stunning property?

In 2010, a couple named Susan and Bob Sulentic did just that.

Bob, a Midwestern guy, is CEO of the huge CBRE Group, a Fortune 500 company and the world’s largest real estate services firm. I quickly got word that our old house was being torn down. I googled the new owners and cried.

I walked over rubble to see her for one last time. The wall where we measured our kid’s heights was still standing in the little pantry. Those awful fake tile boards (to match the tile counters and backsplash) were still on the walls, and the garden room, which Neimans used often for photo shoots, was still intact. But not for long!

They filled in our old pool, jack-hammered the tennis court, trashed the net and backboard. But they babysat the huge oaks on the property like a female elephant and every time I drove by, trees and plant beds were covered like babies in the nursery. When they completed the house, the landscaping was meticulously replaced — we kept the original beds that bloomed with beautiful tulips each spring likely since the 1940s.

Larry Boerder designed an English country estate befitting the 1.17-acre lot. The home was not overdone — many would have gobbled up more of that property with a giant house — but it was large. It’s 9,800-square-feet total, and I have always loved the way the four-car garage was created in the same space ours was but in motor-court style.

The home was built by Rusty Goff, who has never placed so much as a thumbtack in an inferior home. The home has four bedrooms, formals, a guest suite, huge loaded kitchen, family room, game room, office, exercise room, mammoth laundry, pet laundry, outdoor living area, screened porch, and I’m glad to see a sun room that seems inspired, I hope, by the original. There is an English garden now where our swimming pool was.

While 5511 Park Lane was torn down, it was rebuilt in such a stunning manner — much of which I might have done myself — that I have to say I am intensely happy for the property. Funnily enough, she came full circle from one owner in the commercial real estate industry to another.

She finally has an estate befitting her beauty.

The gorgeous estate at 5511 Park Lane went live on March 7 and is listed for $7.695 million with Garrett Holloway of Dave Perry-Miller. As for those experts in 1997 who told us to take our equity and build elsewhere, here is the return we would have received from our purchase in 1989: 1,010 percent.

God bless Dallas real estate.