Mattamy founder building his legacy around ecomansion
Zero-energy Florida dream home furthest thing from houses Peter Gilgan made his fortune on
A mystery buyer spent US$ 48.8 million on a 10,800- square- foot beachfront mansion two years ago, a southwest Florida record. Then tore it down.
That got the neighbours buzzing. At a charity gala at the Ritz- Carlton Golf Resort, they gossiped about their new neighbour’s identity. When they finally figured it out, it was pretty ho-hum. After all, this wasn’t any neighbourhood. It was the seaside Port Royal community of Naples, also home to John Legere, former chief executive officer of T-mobile US Inc., and Tom Golisano, founder of Paychex Inc. The house wrecker’s name — Peter Gilgan — barely registered.
Gilgan, 69, athletic, sunburned, teary when he talks about his eight children and 10 grandchildren, is the philanthropist billionaire who created Mattamy Homes and expanded it into the biggest closely held homebuilder in North America.
Now Gilgan is reassessing his relative anonymity. He wants people to notice him. He wants them to know he’s willing to do whatever it takes — maybe spend another US$ 50 million — to build his own dream home that’s net- zero energy: a mansion that will generate renewable power roughly equal to the power it uses. He wants to persuade others to follow him on the path to sustainability. He wants this to be his legacy.
Gilgan’s shopping list for the five-acre project is Brobdingnagian: about 500 solar panels, a geothermal system with dozens of heat pumps connected by 42 kilometres of piping, a type of heat- reflecting windowpane that hasn’t been invented.
All that will eventually go with a grand piano that will hang from the second- floor balcony, a glass elevator, and, for the yard, a 150- year- old Kapok tree uprooted and trucked in from 100 miles away. And of course garages for his car collection.
Should we care that the man who says he wants this experiment in environmental stewardship to be his enduring legacy also flies in a private jet about once a week? ( He says the jet company considers his plane carbon neutral because it’s enrolled in a carbon offset project for hydropower in Vietnam.)
Or that the innovations he develops may be out of reach for the typical middle- class Mattamy customer, on whom his fortune was built and whose cookie- cutter homes are carbon emitters?
Does it matter if the man who builds a sustainable megamansion — who wants to practically invent the sustainable megamansion — is himself unsustainable?
Let’s say no. Let’s say innovations have to start somewhere, even if it’s a stately pleasure dome.
Oh, and Gilgan says his Xanadu will have gas fireplaces. That’s fireplaces with an “s.” “You can’t have a spa bath without a fireplace,” Gilgan says with a wink. “That would just be offensive.” He adds, “I’ll go for a bike ride tomorrow instead of taking a car.” Gilgan later decided against the gas fireplaces.
On a warm, prepandemic March morning, the breeze carries a whiff of salt water. Workers are pouring concrete. Cranes are swinging overhead. Surrounded by royal palms and the Gulf of Mexico, the bones of Gilgan’s megamansion rise. He’s nicknamed the project “25C.”
The man himself sports a goofy grin as he pulls up on a BMW motorcycle. Despite hip surgery last year, and an outfit that includes fitted jeans and sandals, Gilgan scurries up a ladder to show off the roof, still under construction, that will feature layers of insulation to keep the residence cool. Solar panels will be connected to the local utility grid. That geothermal system will control the house’s temperature. Twenty- inch walls will dramatically reduce overheating.
But what really perks up Gilgan is the electronic game he hopes to develop. The graphics will show energy consumption in different parts of his house. The goal would be to use the readings to reduce power use.
Gilgan has devoted a great deal of time and effort to the details of 25C. He rented a warehouse to build a mockup of a two-storey section of the house to scale. He reconfigured the central staircase 16 times. His kitchen designs are on Version N. And then there are the windows.
Florida has rules about windows in coastal homes. They’re intended to protect sea turtles, an endangered species. When baby turtles hatch in the sand, they make their way to the sea, guided by the moon. But when the lights in house windows fool them, they never make it to the water. So state code mandates reduced light projection. The simplest way to comply is to tint the windows.
But nothing is simple with Gilgan’s showcase. “I don’t want to look through blue glass or yellow glass,” he says. “I want to look through clear glass.”
It’s “Peter’s code:” turtle- friendly, no solar rays, clear. Engineers at Tischler & Sohn, a window manufacturer, told Gilgan such a thing didn’t exist. Gilgan told them to invent one. After much back and forth between Tischler and its client, the result: the Tischler Glass Type Option B “Low Iron.” It complies with Peter’s code. Could it work in Mattamy homes?
The technology Gilgan is testing in his mansion isn’t revolutionary. But he’s convinced it could change the way his peers prioritize sustainability. Buildings and construction are responsible for 39 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, according to the World Green Building Council. A key impediment to improvement is cost.
“These homes can be done for ordinary folks, not just billionaires,” says John Sterman, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “It doesn’t require new, unproven, unreliable technologies.”
Mattamy leads many of its peers in energy efficiency. It has a pilot program to install heat pumps in some of its Ontario homes, and it collects data on carbon reduction.
But for Mattamy, no fancy windows. Not yet.
Gilgan grew up west of Toronto and started out as an accountant. He built his first two homes outside Toronto 42 years ago. That evolved into Mattamy, named after his oldest kids, Matt and Amy. The company has sold more than 100,000 suburban houses from Ontario to Florida.
Gilgan’s success came despite several housing recessions and some bad bets. He got ahead of himself with some poor land plays in the 1980s that made him vulnerable to a property- market crash. Then he hatched the idea to build homes by assembly line. He lost US$ 75 million.
Still, he has amassed a billion. He’s the biggest benefactor to health care in Canada. His private foundation has dispersed more than US$260 million. Gilgan doesn’t envision 25C as a moneymaker. It’s a chance to indulge his self- image as an innovator without a profit motive.
“We never say no to Peter, even when the ideas seem far- fetched,” says Randall Stofft, an architect for the Naples home. “I had one guy who did that, and it didn’t end up well. He’s a demanding client.”
The 25C project could be a chance to use all that wealth to wield influence for something good, Gilgan says. “You want to leave behind something meaningful, memorable to your family, that people can be proud that they know you. This, to me, is an investment,”
Gilgan says about 25C. “Sure, it costs money. So what? It’s a great investment in society and a personal sense of self-worth.”
Like a brisk bike ride after using his private plane, it makes him feel good.