Thursday, August 13, 2009

A Bachelors Pad Fit for a King: Derek Jeter’s New Mansion on Davis Islands

Derek Jeter, the star of the New York Yankees baseball team, will soon have space for a very nice collection of cars in the six garages he is having built. The garages and the driveway wrapping around out front should be plenty of space for friends and family who are certain to drop by his new, rather large, almost 31,000 square foot home on Davis Islands. I shot three separate photos and "stitched" them together with Windows Live in order the get the whole house in one frame. The house, still under construction today, is huge. Homes on the street are very, very nice, in amenities and size, but this one stands out from the rest. Some of his neighbors aren’t terribly excited about the humongous home he is having built but most seem to be taking it in their stride. The all-star Yankee ballplayer is building a literal mansion with seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms on a spectacular lot on Hillsborough Bay. Jeter already owns a very nice bachelor’s pad in Tampa’s Avila which has five-bedrooms and five-bathrooms. This place certainly dwarfs that house and will be Tampa’s largest private residence. He paid $7.7 million for the property alone and when it’s completed the English manor-style waterfront residence should be worth an additional $6-7 million. As he is currently earning $21.6 million a year, I guess he can afford to spend a small portion on a new, bigger address. As you can see, there is a center section, the main part of the house, and then wings with the garages on either side. There will be a pool on the water. He just got permission to wall the property with a 6-foot fence combination of stone and iron. If he didn’t, I’m certain his portico would be filled day and night with paparazzi, autograph seekers and celebrity hounds trying to catch a glimpse of him and his latest girlfriend, whoever that might be on that particular day. As I was looking for a bit of background on the house itself, I read a piece that commented on how wise it was for Jeter to build such an over-the-top mansion without benefit of a wife or girlfriend…to offer her advice, opinion and desires. That said, I wonder how long he will really live here. Good question.

9 comments:

The Fourth said...

Wait, you mean this isn't a 18th century English manor house surrounded by hundreds of acres of parklands?

Lowell said...

I guess this might be called conspicuous consumption...and isn't it nice that we pay our teachers so well...oh, wait, he's not a teacher?

He plays a game?

Lois said...

Good grief! I was going to say you'll have to go back when it's finished and get a picture, but if he builds that wall, I don't guess you can. I wonder how many other houses he has!

Frank said...

I'm sure he teaches other young, up and coming ball players how to juggle career with dating. That qualifies for the bit higher salary.

Believe it or not, the property fans out and the back of the structure is actually wider and bigger then the front.

Don and Krise said...

Good grief! I certainly hope when they're done it looks a little "homier". Right now it looks like a compound. Frank, do you have a pad like this??

VP said...

I hope some local workers get at least some work building this palatial house.

B SQUARED said...

I wonder what my grandfather would think. He used to play professional baseball. Back then, it was not a full time job. You barely made enough money and had to have other work to survive the off-season. All that for playing a kid's game? What is wrong with our society? I think somewhere there is a real estate agent licking their chops.

Frank said...

B Squared: I agree wholeheartedly with you regarding sports' salaries. Our teachers, and police, fire pro's make paltry sums compared to a ballplayer? I wonder if this is what happened to the gladiators in Rome and Greece. Did their salaries begin to outstrip everyone else until someone took notice that the sports/entertainment "stars" could build mansions while the unemployment lines grew longer and longer?

Lynette said...

Gosh, but that's ugly. Not only in how it looks but in what it costs, what it represents. It looks like an office complex. Ugly. That's my opinion anyway.