EVERETT — The perfect holiday gift for someone who has everything might be the place to put their everythings.
Like this 10,000-square-foot mansion on the waterfront selling for a few pennies under $5 million.
What’s up with that?
The home at 3727 Shore Ave. has five bedrooms, eight bathrooms, two kitchens and Italian marble floors throughout. The estate sits on 1.29 acres with a pool to soak in panoramic views, from Whidbey Island to Mount Baker. The property is near the Mukilteo border in what some call “Everetteo.”
The first phase of the Nantucket-style home was built in 1940 with a Weyerhaeuser lumber connection.
“It is well-built and strong with a lot of character,” said listing broker Rose Garcez of Keller Williams Realty in Everett. “They put their heart into it.”
It’s no cookie-cutter mansion, for sure.
The home’s additions were made with pizza dough.
Brian Olson was in third grade in 1968 when he moved into the home with his mom, dad and younger brother.
“Both of the wings were not there,” Olson said. “As years went on we added to the home.”
Additions included more rooms, a covered veranda, pool, garage and marble flooring.
His parents, Bruce and Judy Olson, owned a clothing store at a Lynnwood shopping center when they bought a pizzeria and renamed it Bonnie & Clyde’s.
“My dad wanted to start something brand new,” Olson said. “A new concept, a new direction. He came home one day and said, ‘I don’t know what the name is, but it needs to start with the letter A because we want to be first in the phone book.’ My mom was ironing one day and a song came on, ‘What’s it all about, Alfie?’ That’s how the name began.”
His parents opened the first Alfy’s Pizza on north Broadway in Everett in 1973.
Shore Avenue is an established street that spans three blocks with two contrasting sides: one with waterfront homes, many gated, and the other side with abodes for those of more modest means. The “haves” and “have-less” live in harmony on the street, a popular walking lane for residents in the Mukilteo Boulevard area.
“It was a great place to grow up,” Olson said. “Edgewater Park was the home base. Everybody would come down to the park to play tennis and baseball and basketball. Our parents would have to beg us to come home. We walked up to the store and bought candy and pop, and walked down to the beach. Now my grandkids go to that park.”
Members of the Olson family owned the home until 1999.
“It would be phenomenal for some family to move in and experience the same memories I had as a kid,” Olson said.
Before the Olson era, Janice Rucker was a frequent visitor in the late 1950s when her bestie from Everett High School lived there.
“It was an elegant house,” Rucker said. “I was always impressed with the back stairway, because I hadn’t known houses had two stairways like that going upstairs. It went from the kitchen up to the bedroom level. It was like a secret stairway.”
She remembers her friend’s father, a Weyerhaeuser muckety-muck, tending to the roses.
“He had these beautiful rose gardens that went along the curved driveway,” Rucker said. “It was charming how they were very important to him.”
The Shore Avenue home last sold for $2.25 million in 2006. The current owners are downsizing.
The estimated monthly cost is $22,813, according to Zillow. That doesn’t include utilities.
The average home size in the U.S. has about 2,500 square feet. Maybe you can find three other families to move in with you and share the mortgage.
Mansion shoppers have several choices in Snohomish County.
Also in Everett is a $3.7 million pad at 328 Alverson Blvd. The home near Legion Park has five bedrooms, nine bathrooms, eight-car garage, tennis court, pool, etc. It went on the market in March.
Three estates in Edmonds, Snohomish and Arlington are in the $5 million range.
New on the market, at 10608 Marine View Dr. in Mukilteo, is a $3.95 million home billed as “built for entertainment” with a pool cabana, movie theater, indoor sports court, billiards room and a 3,500-bottle wine cellar.
Need more rooms? A $16.7 million estate at 22420 Dogwood Lane in Woodway has nearly 13,000 square feet of living space on nine secluded acres. It was listed in June. Estimated monthly costs are $76,670, and that’s after you cough up $3.3 million for the 20% down payment.
And still up for grabs is the $2.3 million Monroe castle, a 19-acre property with a gun range and 9-foot dragon behind a gate at 21632 High Rock Road.
The medieval marvel has a collection of swords, heraldic flags and curios included with the house, listed in September. Five suits of wearable knight armor also stay, so you can dress the part. The four bedrooms have names: the honeymoon suite; the friendship with two twin beds; the Romeo and Juliet bedroom with balcony; and the primary suite with a loft and ceiling constellations that glow at night.
Andrea Brown: abrown@heraldnet.com;
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