A green megamansion rises in Florida
Mattamy Homes owner wants to persuade others to follow him on path to sustainability
A mystery buyer spent $48.8 million (U.S.) 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 $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 161 kilometres away. And of course garages for his car collection. 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. Twentyinch 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 as much as possible.
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.
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 propertymarket crash. Then he hatched the idea to build homes by assembly line. He lost $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 $260 million. Gilgan doesn’t envision 25C as a money-maker. 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 farfetched,” 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?”