When you get two creative forces together, it’s not uncommon to have a fireworks display of ideas light up a room. At least it’s a pretty common occurrence for the husband-and-wife architectural team of Jim and Karen LeCron of Arr/LeCron Architects, Inc. in Santa Barbara, who share a passion for creating dreamy getaways from California to Hawaii.
Their current project, a mere four months on the drawing board, took them to Maui, where they decided to build a home that mirrors all the details of a resort. The difference? This is your own private beachfront resort, and once you are here, you can choose to cocoon yourself in your suite and meet your friends by the pool only after you’ve melted your stress away.
The idea for this particular home came to them several years ago when the couple was vacationing in Maui. While they loved the island, they had grown tired of staying in hotel rooms and condominiums that felt confining and cramped after a few days, and it occurred to them that they were not alone.
“We have a vacation home on Lake Tahoe, and we have friends and family come there,” Jim says. “So we thought how much fun it would be to build a vacation home in Hawaii, but with a resort-theme twist.” In fact, while attending the University of California at Berkeley, Karen wrote her thesis on resort design at Lake Tahoe’s Squaw Valley Ski Resort and learned first-hand from countless interviews what it is that people look for in a destination resort.
Together with a few other couples, they ended up purchasing this magnificent slice of Maui oceanfront property, with views of Molokai and Lanai, and decided this would be the perfect site for their mini-resort.
The home sits in the neighborhood known as the Jewel of Kahana and is minutes from Kapalua Bay, known as the home to one of the world’s best beaches. “It’s a place we have been coming to for years and years. It’s a good destination for families; it’s very kid friendly, and there are fabulous restaurants and lots of amenities,” Karen says.
The couple laid out the design plans for the home by thinking about all those details that create the resort experience— from the private rooms to the common spaces in resorts and how they all function. Then they thought about how to translate those experiences into the scale of a home. “We imagined ourselves in the space and visualized in three dimensions what the experience would be like. Part of that process was the dream or fantasy aspect,” Karen explains.
And just as you’d find at a resort, the home boasts individual suites. These have been designed with pocket doors that disappear when fully opened, providing seamless transition to outside rooms, and each suite has its own wet bar, stunning designer bathroom, flat-screen television, and endless water views. There is a common area for entering and exiting, which functions much like a hotel lobby where you can make plans to meet poolside or at the bar (adjacent to the kitchen) and be on your way. The kitchen is open, informal, and welcoming. Whether the homeowner is cooking for family or guests or if a guest chef comes in for a demo and dinner party, the kitchen is a place laid out for socializing.
“We designed the house for entertaining, but also so anyone staying here can be pampered. There’s the main kitchen, and then there is a second kitchen that is accessible to caterers. We’ve had private chefs come in and put on private luaus.They get to work behind the scenes and hide the dishes,”she says, noting that the home’s design could also serve well as a company retreat. The second floor, complete with a pool table and big-screen television, has the open feeling of a mezzanineand game room.
The overall feeling here is contemporary and clean with lots of glass, native Kapalua blue rock that was quarried out of the site, and travertine stone, which moves from inside to outside with no demarcation. Brazilian cherry and Sappelli woods add warm accents. As you move throughout the house, you will find a palette comprised of ocean colors, whether it be walls, fabric stone, or tile. It is also deemed a “smart house,” as all mechanics and lighting can be controlled from certain locations within the house, as well as remotely by computer. And there are some other interesting, practical touches, like the automated translucent blinds that disappear into the ceiling once the hot daytime sun sets.
The swimming pool, complete with waterfalls and a spa, comes up to the house and is designed to look like a tropical lagoon. It’s so close to the house that you can be in the pool and still converse with people who are in the dining room. The main house is 9,800 square feet in size, and there is also a two-story guesthouse or ohana to accommodate even more guests. The ohana is as luxurious as the main house and has its own kitchen, patio, and sleeping loft.
Rows of palm trees shelter the 400-foot-wide, 200-footlong parcel of land from the road, and a carpet of emerald green lawn rolls to the ocean’s edge. The property is being sold furnished, and bathrooms come with bathrobes, shampoo, massage oil, and all the necessities to start a vacation. $14,900,000, Mary Anne Fitch, Maui Estates International, 808-250-1583, soldmaui.com.
By Anna Kasabian
