One of the most famous houses on the barrier island is back on the market, with a new look and price.
The Estate Section home known variously as Palazzo Di Mare and “the barcode lady’s house” was purchased at auction in June 2017 by a limited liability company with a Vero Beach-based managing partner for $8.8 million.
After an 18-month renovation process that transformed the look and feel of the house and grounds, the owners have put the property back on the market, listing it with Cindy O’Dare and Richard Boga of Premier Estate Properties for $17 million.
Completed in 1991, the 23,315-square-foot house sits on a five-acre ocean-to-river lot with 205 feet of ocean frontage and 198 feet of river shoreline. There are seven bedrooms, nine full baths and two half-baths, two elevators, stone and hardwood floors, a 14-car underground garage, a beautifully-tiled swimming pool and extensive landscaped grounds, including a sweeping back lawn that would do a seaside resort proud.
But those details don’t begin to describe the underlying quality of the poured-concrete house or the amazing renovation accomplished by Anthony Tinghitella and John Fulcher, partners in the Vero Beach design firm Smythe & Cortlandt.
Prior to the renovation, the house had a heavy, Mediterranean look and feel. It was dark and closed off inside with an almost medieval Spanish décor – lots of heavy, ornate wood and black floors – and very few ocean views.
Now it resembles a classic Palm Beach oceanfront estate, updated and decorated in a light, bright but still very luxurious style, a breezy dream world that is both restful and wonderfully alive with architectural and design elements that range from Moorish to Art Deco.
“Anthony knew as soon as he saw the house what he wanted to do with it,” says O’Dare, who recommended Smythe & Cortlandt to the owners. “He and John have totally transformed the property.”
“It is all about giving the house a new story, while honoring its earlier story,” Tinghitella says.
Major changes included raising the sunken living room, cutting large openings in exterior walls for new windows to let in more light and sea views, and removing interior walls so that the light spreads through the house. Most of the black marble floors were covered with light-colored Larchwood from Austria and fabric was used extensively to soften the stone house, with sheaths around concrete columns, runners on stone staircases and sweeping curtain walls that can be used to create intimate sheltered spaces.
All the existing windows were replaced with new, storm-resistant units and the house was repainted from top to bottom, inside and out, becoming a white palace decorated with tones of blue and soft gray.
“The house exterior was a dull beige color before and I think the white makes a tremendous difference,” says Tinghitella. Inside the dark wood that had loomed everywhere was painted white or re-stained in one of the two accent colors and the house was filled with beautiful furnishing and art, with every detail affirming the clarity and creativity of the designers’ vision.
While creating a more open and youthful story for the house, Tinghitella and Fulcher were able to incorporate key elements of the house’s previous story, blending plumbing fixtures and built-in furniture pieces that were too valuable and beautiful to discard.
“We kept the bathroom sinks which were designed by Cheryl Wagner and worth $6,000 each,” Tinghitella says. “It didn’t make sense to tear those out and replace them.” Also preserved were onyx and marble vanity tops, gold-plated fixtures, deep soaking tubs and other irreplaceable features and finishes.
Tinghitella and Fulcher got their first look the house in September 2017, a few months after the sale closed, and soon began an 18-month process of reimagining the building and grounds.
The partners worked directly for the owner, creating working drawings with a draftsman, ordering all the furniture, fixtures and specialty materials, and then overseeing a general contractor and tradesmen who implemented the design they and the owner decided on.
“We bounce design ideas off of each other,” Tinghitella says. “But I take the lead on the design while John manages the day-to-day business, making sure everything gets done.
“The house was stuck in the 1990s. We have given it a much more youthful and contemporary look and because John and I both have classical tastes it will stay fresh for many years to come.”
The house was the creation of Sharon Nicholson, the widow of William Nicholson, co-founder of Retail Grocery Inventory Service, now called RGIS, a leading inventory control company that utilizes barcode technology.
She bought the 5-acre property in 1994 and spent years building and decorating her ornate mansion, completing the house in 2001.
The property has been listed numerous times over the years, at prices ranging from $33.5 million to $20 million, the listing price at the time of the auction in 2017.
O’Dare and Boga relaunched the transformed house with a gala evening event on March 7 that O’Dare says drew a crowd of more than 200.
As an added bonus for the right buyer, the property has development potential, according to Boga. It includes a 1-acre upland parcel on the west side of A1A that is zoned RS-3, which allows three units per acre.
“You could likely construct three homes on that piece of land,” Boga says. “For that matter, if the right entrepreneurial buyer comes along, we also have the adjacent 300 feet to the south for sale (between Round Island Park and the riverfront portion of 2150 A1A).
“That offering is on the market for $1,249,000 and contains roughly 2 acres of uplands, meaning that the combination of the two riverfront parcels could potentially accommodate 9 homes.”
So if a buyer snagged Palazzo Di Mare, and added another $1.25 million to the deal, he or she could end up with an extraordinary oceanfront residence and 3 acres of development land where the cost of the deal could be recouped by building and selling luxury homes. Alternately, the development land could be sold as a 3-acre package to a builder.