Feature Article |
Sand Castles
When a potato-chip heir decided to build one of the biggest mansions ever in Avalon, the town that prides itself on being “cooler by a mile” found its citizens hot under the collar. Are people with too much money and too-big houses destroying
By Michael Callahan
- Photography by Joseph Melanson/Skypic
ELAINE SCATTERGOOD CLUTCHES HER FEISTY LAPDOG, Frances, against her bosom, standing at the mammoth concrete base that will, this time next year, serve as the foundation of Michael Rice’s über-mansion in Avalon. It’s a gorgeous day at the beach, the kind that makes people play hooky and head to the Shore. But Scattergood isn’t enjoying the weather. Her eyes are cold and flinty as she squints through the sun.
“I asked him, you know,” she says. Frances wiggles free and leaps from her arms, sniffing the gravelly ground around us. Scattergood is talking about the last time she saw Rice, the potato-chip magnate who’s building what will surely be one of the biggest houses ever constructed at the Shore. “I went up to him and said, ‘Why? Why do you need a house that large?’”
The question seems fair enough, especially given that Rice, the beefy heir to the Hanover, Pennsylvania-based Utz potato-chip fortune, and his elegant blond wife, Jane, already had a pretty sizeable house in Avalon — a seven-bedroom, seven-bath beachfront manor sporting an elevator, a spa and a library. Apparently, though, that little abode was starting to feel a tad cramped, and so last spring the couple broke ground on the even bigger house now in question: a 14,000-square-foot monstrosity that sits atop Avalon’s storied high dunes and reportedly will include 13 bathrooms, nine bedrooms, a pool, maids’ quarters, and views overlooking both the ocean and the bay.
Scattergood says that when she asked Michael Rice why he was building such a big house, his answer amounted to, well, because. “Oh, we asked for more,” she remembers Rice saying. “We were told by our lawyer to ask for more. So in the end, we got exactly what we wanted.”
A 14,000-square-foot house — that’s three times the footprint of Independence Hall, for those of you scoring at home — is clearly not something that Scattergood and her Avalon compadres want in their town, which is why they’ve gone to war trying to stop the House That Potato Chips Built. They’ve spoken at borough council meetings, filed a lawsuit, even hit the Rices where it hurts — launching an unofficial Utz potato-chip boycott. None of which has endeared Scattergood to Michael Rice. “He really doesn’t like me,” she says.
“I asked him, you know,” she says. Frances wiggles free and leaps from her arms, sniffing the gravelly ground around us. Scattergood is talking about the last time she saw Rice, the potato-chip magnate who’s building what will surely be one of the biggest houses ever constructed at the Shore. “I went up to him and said, ‘Why? Why do you need a house that large?’”
The question seems fair enough, especially given that Rice, the beefy heir to the Hanover, Pennsylvania-based Utz potato-chip fortune, and his elegant blond wife, Jane, already had a pretty sizeable house in Avalon — a seven-bedroom, seven-bath beachfront manor sporting an elevator, a spa and a library. Apparently, though, that little abode was starting to feel a tad cramped, and so last spring the couple broke ground on the even bigger house now in question: a 14,000-square-foot monstrosity that sits atop Avalon’s storied high dunes and reportedly will include 13 bathrooms, nine bedrooms, a pool, maids’ quarters, and views overlooking both the ocean and the bay.
Scattergood says that when she asked Michael Rice why he was building such a big house, his answer amounted to, well, because. “Oh, we asked for more,” she remembers Rice saying. “We were told by our lawyer to ask for more. So in the end, we got exactly what we wanted.”
A 14,000-square-foot house — that’s three times the footprint of Independence Hall, for those of you scoring at home — is clearly not something that Scattergood and her Avalon compadres want in their town, which is why they’ve gone to war trying to stop the House That Potato Chips Built. They’ve spoken at borough council meetings, filed a lawsuit, even hit the Rices where it hurts — launching an unofficial Utz potato-chip boycott. None of which has endeared Scattergood to Michael Rice. “He really doesn’t like me,” she says.
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Posted by | Oct. 10, 2007 at 10:50 AM