By Davis Driver
The Bacon House at Desert Mountain is an absolutely striking 9,860-sq.-ft., south-facing, five-bedroom “Great Room” home designed by Master of the Southwest Architectural Designer Bob Bacon in Desert Mountain, a secure, gated, private club and recreation-oriented master planned community in Scottsdale. Bacon was able to design the home without the typical outside direction of a developer or buyer and as a result; it is a true masterpiece of architectural art, destined to be the finest home of its type in Desert Mountain and one of the most distinctive homes in the country. A complete collection of furnishings and housewares curated by Bacon is also available.
Desert Mountain is an 8,200-acre, 33-year-old luxury community in the spectacular High Sonoran Desert with elevations ranging up to nearly 5,000 feet. On the south-facing slopes of the Continental Mountain range in north Scottsdale, Desert Mountain overlooks Phoenix, Scottsdale and the entire Valley of the Sun. Membership is optional in the community’s private club, known as The Desert Mountain Club. Among many other things, club members enjoy the private use of seven golf courses, seven clubhouses, and nine dining venues.
The Bacon House offers long-range, panoramic views of hundreds of square miles of fabulous Arizona scenery, including famed Pinnacle Peak in the McDowell Mountains to the southeast, a carpet of city lights to the south on the valley floor at night, nearby Lone and Black Mountains, several layered mountain ranges to the southwest, and of course, a sky-full of Arizona’s famous sunsets. Homes for all the lots in the view shed of The Bacon House have been completed so there is no uncertainty about the views from this home.
The Bacon House will be built on lot No. 107 in a custom home Village in Desert Mountain known as the Saguaro Forest, named for the abundance of naturally occurring ancient, giant Saguaro cacti–including 38 on this lot. All the Villages in Desert Mountain are special, but the Saguaro Forest is physically the largest with over 300 homesites and it has the greatest concentration of Desert Mountain’s most expensive homes. Individual owners in Desert Mountain have invested as much as $38,000,000 in homes designed and built for their own use. For an investment of $13,000,000 (unfurnished), the buyer of The Bacon House at Desert Mountain can take great comfort knowing that, not only is their home not the most expensive home on the block, but also that they own an exceptional example of timeless architectural art that should grow in value over time, and not diminish in value as is the fate of so many homes designed based on a current fashion.
The main floor of The Bacon House is 3,201.5 feet above sea level and about 2,000 feet above the valley floor, affording a comfortable year-round climate. The home’s solar orientation and solar specific design will make for pleasant outdoor experiences even in the height of summer, when the sun is going down much further to the north and nighttime temperatures are typically 15 to 20 degrees cooler than what is recorded and reported at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. The home’s southern exposure is by far the most favored orientation in Desert Mountain, not only because it is the direction in which the long-range views live, but also because homes with south exposures are sunnier, brighter and warmer in the winter than homes facing north.
Bacon calls the design an “Homage to Early Modernism” and describes it as a seminal accomplishment, achieving a balance of open, casual, and spacious modernity, with a welcoming, warm, and intimate ambiance–all superbly arranged to accommodate a variety of lifestyles and all manner of entertaining for a family or for a couple simply wishing to enjoy a quiet retreat immersed in art. The quality of design, coupled with the best of materials and construction quality, a lush desert setting, panoramic views, and convenient location will render The Bacon House at Desert Mountain a remarkable long-term value for its owner, an example of true legacy real estate sure to be enjoyed by generations of proud family members.
Design highlights include two, opposing two-car garages, barely visible from the street and equipped with custom cabinetry; a wonderful design that shows off more and more of the home’s design magic as one gets closer and closer to the home, and then enters it, through a beautiful beveled glass door; a central atrium with operable windows; a large recreation room with wet bar and a 2,000-bottle wine storage room; a fabulous junior master suite; washers and dryers in all bathrooms; a multi-purpose “laundry/craft/office” room (with great views!); a fresh air “cigar porch”; a large air-conditioned storage room; glass block flooring on the main level to admit more light into the lower level, making it bright and cheerful; and an extra-large commercial quality elevator to get back and forth between the two levels.
The opportunity to be a member of the Desert Mountain Club is a significant part of the attraction of living in Desert Mountain for most property owners. The Club is the emotional, physical and social core of the community. In addition to the Club’s golf assets, which include six eighteen-hole championship Jack Nicklaus Signature courses; one eighteen-hole USGA-rated, par-54 course; four practice ranges, and a high-tech golf performance center, there is a hugely popular 20-mile-long private trail system reaching an altitude of 4,890 feet available to all residents (hike, bike, run, or ride a horse). The trailhead is about a five-minute drive from The Bacon House.
The center of activity at the Club is the Sonoran Clubhouse, a remarkable swim (three heated pools), tennis (nine courts, including one grass, five Har-Tru, and three cushioned surface hard courts), pickleball (six courts), bocce (two courts), croquet (two courts), fitness (a large, fitness center with a range of classes and private trainers), and spa facility, plus a dining facility. Very popular programs including sports instruction are also offered for children and grandchildren. The Sonoran Clubhouse enjoyed a $12,000,000 renovation in 2016 before the bocce, croquet, and pickleball courts were added the next year. It is now perhaps the premier facility of its type in the entire Southwest. The Bacon House at Desert Mountain is about a five-minute drive to the Sonoran Clubhouse, and within a 550-yard walk to another clubhouse, the one serving the Chiricahua Golf Course. This clubhouse’s dining option is Constantino’s, the Club’s signature restaurant, serving fine northern Italian cuisine in an elegant setting with 80-mile views.
Desert Mountain is a place of surpassing scenic beauty. For that and a lot of other reasons it has attracted full-and part-time residents from all over the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and more. One attraction is that real estate taxes are strikingly low compared to many parts of the country, particularly the Northeast, Midwest, and California. 2019 taxes on the closest comparable home (7,545 square feet, sold in May of 2019 for $9,300,000) were just $19,810. The weather is famously sunny, and our risk of natural disasters is extremely low. Being higher and somewhat removed from the city means the stars are bright at night and the air is typically much cleaner than what lies over the Valley.
Desert Mountain’s Front Gate is normally about a forty-minute drive north from Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, and about a twenty-one-minute drive to the main private jet terminal at Scottsdale Airport (Signature Flight Support). Day-to-day shopping needs for Desert Mountain owners are well-handled within about a ten-minute drive to the merchants in the nearby towns of Carefree and Cave Creek. There are 69 restaurants and bars within about sixteen minutes’ drive of the Main Gate. Otherwise, the Phoenix/Scottsdale area is famous for world-class shopping, major league and collegiate sports (including baseball Spring Training and the Waste Management Phoenix Golf Open), terrific air service, and a wide variety of cultural attractions and special events (huge car auctions in January and February horse shows among them). Desert Mountain is within two and a half hours of normally excellent snow skiing in Flagstaff. Its location in the southwestern part of the United States affords easy access to the entire American West, with especially easy access to San Diego, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, and a plethora of unbelievably beautiful places in Southern Utah. “Paradise” doesn’t overstate it.
Against this backdrop of privacy, service, beauty and recreation, The Bacon House at Desert Mountain really is “the opportunity of a lifetime” for some fortunate family. We will welcome the opportunity to meet interested parties to help them understand the home–and help them learn all about the community, the Club, and the area! For further details, visit www.thebaconhouse.com.
