Facts about this single-family home:
4 bedrooms/27 bathrooms/15 car garage/Formal dining room, library, theater, ballroom, hand-painted ceilings, 13 fireplaces, steam room, wine cellar, two-lane bowling alley, indoor racquetball court, sunken tennis court (to keep the wind out), observation deck with view of Lewisville Lake and downtown Dallas, and much more. Home is on 30 acres with 1.5 acre pond. Current asking price: $45 million.
(Assuming 10% down and 5.75% interest on a loan amount of $40.5 million, the monthly payment on a conventional 30 year loan would be $236,347.01. Of course, that may be chump change compared to the summer utility bills, since the air-conditioning capacity is 130 tons.)
Update February 2023 It is not surprising that things have changed in the twenty years since this cache was placed, especially in one of the fastest growing areas of the U.S. When originally placed, the local high school had their FFA barns on the corner (the required answer to claim the cache). I always found it somewhat amazing that the largest home in North Texas was next to the FFA barns, hence my reason for asking for that. Apparently the FFA facility is no longer there. With that in mind, there is no longer a requirement to answer any question to claim the cache. I still think the strange history of this building is interesting and hope you will enjoy checking it out. Happy caching!
Update October 2022 As pointed out in one of the logs, many of the links below no longer go to pictures. Perhaps not surprisingly after all of this time, there have also been major changes in ownership. Champ D'Or, at least as a private home, is no more, It is now Olana, a wedding venue. Click here for a news article about the change, or here for the Olana wedding venue advertisement video. However, I still think it is interesting to see pictures and hear some of the stories of the original home. Click here for pictures. Click here for a video.
P.S. This is now not the largest "home" in Texas. That "honor" goes to the former home of Deion Sanders in Prosper, Texas. It is known as Chateau Montclair.
Update February 2014 (The eleventh anniversary of this cache, and still never lived in!): This mansion is up for sale again. I found this site, dated January 31, 2014, which has lots of pictures. For more pictures click here
In case these pages some day go away, here is the text from the first link:
Tacky Texas-Size Mega-Manse Champ d'Or Back For $35M
Location: Hickory Creek, Texas
Price: $35,000,000.
The Skinny: The long, winding tale of Champ d'Or—the Texas mega mansion that has been redefining "gauche" since 2002—took another tortuous turn this week, when the troubled home hit the market less than two years after being sold at auction. The 36,000-square-foot chateau, which was the brainchild of Dallas cell phone magnate Alan Goldfield and his wife, Shirley, took four years, $46M, and an inexhaustible supply of unerring bad taste (see as reference: $5M Chanel-themed closet) to build. When the Pharoanic construction was finally complete, the couple took a good hard look at what they had wrought and promptly put the place on the market for $75M. There it sat for a decade, suffering PriceChop after PriceChop, before distressed luxury property specialists Concierge Auctions finally unloaded the manse for an undisclosed sum from an undisclosed buyer with "international ties", whatever that means. That mysterious buyer has now listed what the broker babble hilariously dubs "Texas [sic] biggest and best masterpiece" for $35M, which will get you "everything even the pickiest buyer has been looking for" except, apparently, a home that anyone would actually want to live in. Still, if it fails at being a livable home (and it does!), as a monument to the giddy tackiness of the pre-recession aughts the Champ d'Or is nonpareil.
Update August 2004: I stumbled across a website by Forbes Magazine click here that indicates Champ d'Or is the second highest priced home on the market in the entire South. Oprah (yes, that Oprah!) apparently wanted to film a segment here, but the owners were not interested.
Here is the info listed on the Forbes Magazine site: "Completed only in 2002, this Denton County, Tex., mansion is owned by Alan Goldfield, retired chairman and chief executive of global cell phone wholesaler CellStar, and his wife, Shirley Goldfield. Champ d'Or (French for "field of gold," a play on the owner's name) is 48,000 square feet and has a tearoom, garden room, ballroom and mini-theater. Rumor has it that the Goldfields decided to sell after a fight over who would get up from bed and trek to the kitchen to get some ice cream. (Shirley disputed that suggestion in published reports, saying they just didn't need a showcase mansion any longer.) The property has seen a number of interested buyers and gawkers--Oprah Winfrey wanted to shoot the home for a segment, but the owners weren't interested. The home is listed with Sotheby's International Realty and Briggs-Freeman Real Estate Brokerage."
PLEASE NOTE: This home is private property. The coordinates are for the main gate area. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENTER THE GROUNDS.
Answering a question is no longer required to claim the cache. See above. To claim this cache, do the following: Go to the first intersection to the west of the Champ d'Or mansion and determine what organization maintains the facility on the southwest corner. Email us with the name of the organization. We reserve the right to delete the log of anyone who does not e-mail us the correct organization name. Feel free to post pictures or to include more information about the house, but please do not include the name of the organization in your post. Happy caching!!
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dscjwoo4 were the first to find and log this cache and enter the
Al2000 and Code Poet Ring of Honor!
Sportsters were the second to find and log this cache and enter the
Al2000 and Code Poet Bridesmaids' Brigade!
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