In the News

William Means Agent Elle Haynes Lists Lowndes Grove Plantation for a Record $7.2 Million

The Post and Courier
4/3/2007
Website: http://www.williammeans.com/find_home/2712099.html

Lowndes Grove on the Market
$7.2M listing price a would-be record sale


BY KYLE STOCK
The Post and Courier


Lowndes Grove, one of the only surviving plantation homes on the Charleston peninsula, is for sale, listed at a would-be record of $7.2 million.

The property, about 15 acres, on the banks of the Ashley River near The Citadel includes a 6-bedroom, 6,800-square-foot home, a carriage house with at least three bedroom and a three-bedroom "groundskeeper's" house. The plantation was listed Friday, said Elle Haynes, a broker at William Means, who is handling the property.

The current owner, Alexander Opoulos III, was out of the country Monday and could not be reached. His son, Alexander Opoulos IV, said that the plantation could be purchased "for the right price," but declined to comment further.

Haynes said the property was listed discreetly, because it is tied to an event-planning business that books gatherings months in advance.

Haynes said she has been contacted by two potential buyers, one of whom would use the property as a private residence. The other, a developer, would look to subdivide the land and build additional homes on it.

Valerie Perry, who works at the Historic Charleston Foundation and lives nearby, said the listing was "all the buzz" at a neighborhood oyster roast held Sunday at the plantation.

"It's such an incredible property," Perry said. "If you sort of close your eyes to the 1940s architecture around it, you really go back in time. You get a good sense of what it was like to live in 19th-century Charleston."

Opoulos and his wife, Tina, bought the main house and the lion's share of the property from Charles and Martha Craven in 2000 for $1.9 million. Two years later, they bought the adjoining carriage house for $600,000. The couple folded all of the property under the company Lowndes Grove Inc.

The current list price on the property is $1.1 million higher than the peninsula's highest home sale to date, 64 South Battery St., which changed hands for $6.1 million in January 2006.

The market for historic, high-end homes is limited and highly specialized, and values can be difficult to figure. Case in point: the 24,000-square-foot Calhoun Mansion on lower Meeting Street. It was listed in 2000 for $9.5 million but eventually sold for $3.75 million in 2004.

The first recorded owner of Lowndes Grove was Richard Cartwright, a settler who acquired the land as part of a larger grant in 1695. The existing house was built around 1786. William Lowndes, a U.S. representative, bought the property in 1804. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt was honored at a reception there as part of an exposition he was attending in Charleston.

The property had a renaissance late in the 20th century and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. In 1988, the Cravens bought Lowndes Grove for $850,000 and restored it. They also put 11 acres under a conservation easement, ensuring that most of the parcel will not be subdivided or significantly developed.

In recent years, the property graced the cover of Oprah's "O" magazine and was the backdrop for a steady stream of nuptials and other special gatherings.

Mitchell Crosby, a local event planner, said Lowndes Grove was "not a hard sell" once brides-to-be saw the waterfront property and its proximity to the city's historic district.

"It's reasonable," Crosby said Monday of the $7.2 million asking price. "I should have bought it at $2.5 (million)."

Reach Kyle Stock at 937-5763 or kstock@postandcourier.com.


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