Imagine living in a 25,400 square feet house. Now imagine a garage that’s even bigger than the house! Well, that’s exactly what I have here. This 25,400 sf, 6-bedroom, 14-bath Colorado mansion sits on 74.5 acres of land. It also comes with a separate 27,000+ sf garage that’s big enough to house 100 cars!
Located in the tiny community of Evergreen, half an hour outside Denver, sits a massive hilltop estate that could be a car-crazy bachelor’s dream come true. It includes a mansion with a Hugh Hefner inspired grotto pool and hanger style garage that can hold over 100 vehicles.
Known as Thunder Ridge, the estate sits on 74.5 acres of land. The 25,400-square-foot mansion has a dramatic living room with 27-foot-ceilings, a Star Trek-themed movie theater and large saltwater aquariums. The grotto-style pool area has a waterfall, a Tiki bar, men’s and women’s locker rooms, a hot tub and a bank of automatic doors that open to the outdoors. The grotto’s ceiling resembles a twinkling starscape at night, with fiber optics depicting constellations and falling stars.
The house is owned by retired race car driver, Richard Berry. Mr. Berry used to race in the American Le Mans series the mid 2000’s and is a longtime car collector and racing team sponsor. When it came time to build his house, he wanted something that would also contain his car collection. That meant the garage needed to be bigger than the house!
At one point, Mr. Berry owned 232 cars, including vintage classics, race cars and 23 Lamborghinis. The supersized garage reflected his desire to house his cars, which had been stored in different garages around Denver. Now all his cars are in one place, and he can even slept with the cars because the garage has its own bedroom and two baths!
Mr Berry bought the lot the house sits on for less than $1 million in the late 1990s, and spent close to seven years and nearly $30 million in design and construction. His architect camped out in a tent on the site for four days to plan out the home and make sure he got the “feng shui” of the place.
The area around the house is great for driving, with about five miles of mountain roads before reaching the highway. Mr. Berry said he’s used the roads as his own little racetrack.
At this point you might be wondering how does a not even semi-famous former race car driver afford all this? Mr. Berry’s grandfather, Loren M. Berry, known as “Mr. Yellow Pages,” invented the telephone directory. In 1986, his father, John Berry, sold the family business to BellSouth, before the internet rendered the telephone directory obsolete. Talk about getting out at the right time!
In 2020, Mr. Berry put the house up for sale with an asking price of $19,999,000. He said the house was just too large for one person. His triplets, two boys and a girl, are of college age and no longer live there. The house is more suited to a family with a staff. “It runs your whole life taking care of it,” he said. However, the house never sold and has since been removed from the market. Mr. Berry still lives there, enjoying his Star Trek movie theater and blasting up and down the mountain roads.
