Palm Beach Gardens luxury home for sale has secret room and bulletproof glass showcases

A home fit for a Roman emperor, or at least his sarcophagus, and teeming with antiquities behind bulletproof glass made a splashy debut on the market last month with a $30 million price tag and matchless amenities.

While the third-century coffin that graces the foyer of the nearly 15,000-square-foot Palm Beach Gardens house is not part of the deal, the mansion does include a secret room encased in concrete; $300,000 in custom doors inlaid with brushed nickel; $25,000 in skull doorknobs, suede wallpaper; and very lightly used, if ever, Miele appliances.

Dubbed Fortezza – Italian for fortress – the five-bedroom, eight-bathroom home took more than three years to build in the Old Palm Country Club near PGA Boulevard and Florida’s Turnpike. If it sells at $30 million, the price, which includes $3 million in furniture, would topple records for northern Palm Beach County properties not on the water, said Echo Fine Properties President Jeff Lichtenstein.

The highest previous sale was 14.9 million for a non-water home in OId Palm, but there is a home currently under contract for $20 million in the same development.

“It feels like a home, but it was really built as a showcase and to display valuable collectables or art,” Lichtenstein said. “It’s incredibly secure.”

The owner, a limited liability company named The Sanguine Group, bought the property at 12400 Hautree Court in 2014 for $900,000. Boca Raton-based Paul Courchene, who specializes in ultra-exclusive properties, built the home. It includes primary room and dining room furniture designed by noted furniture icon Dakota Jackson, including chairs that weigh 100 pounds and a sleigh bed that weighs more than a ton.

The home at 12400 Hautree Court is on the market in Palm Beach Gardens for $30 million. It was built for a collector of antiquities …

Courchene’s Insignia Design Group worked on the details of the home. He said it was the first time he dealt with using ballistic glass. Designing the foyer around the sarcophagus was also a first. The secret safe room, which also acts as a hurricane shelter, wasn’t unique.

“We did have to design it very cleverly so you wouldn’t know it was there,” Courchene said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind home that we’re definitely proud of.”

There’s an art deco-themed theater room with chilled seats, an outdoor kitchen, resort-style pool, a 65-inch television that descends from the ceiling in the primary suite, quartz countertops, $140,000 in crystal hardware, limestone flooring from Brazil, and an office desk with secret drawers.

Lichtenstein said the owner, a history buff, antiquities collector, and Brooklyn, N.Y., native, lived in the home for about three years.

“This has been like a piece of art and now its finished and they are moving onto the next project,” Lichtenstein said.

Lichtenstein said he’s confident Fortezza can fetch its asking price, especially considering it sits on 1-acre of land, which makes it more private than other Old Palm homes.

Of the 22 highest-priced sales in the north end of the county, 18 occurred after 2020. The highest eight prices are all post-pandemic.

“The people who are looking at this property are billionaires,” Lichtenstein said. “The people moving here today are very different than 20 years ago. They are the wealthiest of the wealthy.”

With Wall Street companies, their executives and “75% of the PGA Tour”, moving to Palm Beach County, the ante is upped on the echelon of homes that can fetch high prices. Also, as the market crumbled in 2008, eight country club communities were under construction in Palm Beach County, Lichtenstein said.

“Fast forward to today and there is nothing under construction anymore so your supply in that category is really stagnant but the demands of people moving here are increasing,” he said, noting that most high-end sales are cash deals, meaning higher interest rates are not a concern.

Echo Fine Properties agent Mitch Frank is listing Fortezza. The company spent more than $20,000 on video and camera equipment to boost marketing on social media platforms, online and in brochures.