05/22/09 The most ostentatious mansion in Greenwich history managed to survive the outrage. Now, will it survive the bust?

Haunted CT Mansion
New York Magazine

Find the spot in quietest backcountry Greenwich, Connecticut, where Simmons Lane branches off Lake Avenue, and you’ll pass by a flagstone gate, a no trespassing sign, and a row of green mailboxes—one for each house on the street. These identical mailboxes are the last sign of equality you will see for a while. Beyond the gate, set deep into their land parcels along the gently curving boulevard that seems designed as much for strolling as driving, sit six houses of varying sizes and architectural styles. One of them is slated for demolition, though you wouldn’t be able to tell from its perfectly manicured grounds and the gardener snipping away at the odd weed around the gazebo. This plot of land, as it happens, is the most notorious in town. For here is scheduled to rise one of the largest single-family residences in Greenwich history: the hulking, 39,000-square-foot, bepillared country seat of a secretive Russian airport mogul named Valery Kogan. When plans for the home were first announced, in early 2008, they triggered a nimby fight the likes of which staid, patrician Greenwich has rarely witnessed. The home was seen as a garish (and possibly even illegal) affront to the town’s good taste, its owner a walking nouveau riche caricature. In March, after a legal battle and a minor dialing back of the plans, construction on the home was reluctantly approved. Only now, given the current economic climate, there are questions of whether Kogan can afford to build the place after all. Where the project was once the epitome of the boom, it may well now serve as its gilded tombstone...


....A broker reportedly took her to see the Leona Helmsley estate, which would hit the market at $125 million three years later; Olga’s associate said they didn’t want the publicity brought on by the Helmsley name. The Kogans finally zeroed in on 18 Simmons Lane, a 25,400-square-foot megamansion spread out on a seven-acre lot. The house, hidden beyond a front gate that looked remarkably like the gate from the first shot of Citizen Kane, was built in a whimsical and eclectic style, with a large dome and fairy-tale turrets; the inside was paneled in historic wood the owner had flown in from Flanders. In May 2005, the Kogans bought it, in Olga’s name, for $18.5 million.......



.....The full scope of the Kogans’ desires, however, revealed itself only gradually. By June of the next year, Olga had obtained an interior-demolition permit and began stripping the house bare. A dealer from New York bought the wood paneling; neighbors reported architectural details being taken away by truck. It was becoming clear that the Kogans were not interested in a mere gut renovation—they were going to raze and build from scratch. Exactly what the Kogans were going to erect wasn’t revealed until two years later. When the plans appeared, it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say Greenwich gasped.....

.....Simmons Lane may yet get to keep its serenity anyway. It’s still not known when, or if, the stately dome of Koganadu, with its retractable cover, will rise over the flagstone fence. The Lees have filed a suit against both the commission and Olga Kogan, seeking to stop the project.

Even if the suit doesn’t succeed, the project may yet stall for a very different reason. One of the strangest things the Kogans did with their purchase was leverage the living daylights out of it. In August 2005, they took a $10 million loan from Eastern Savings Bank against the house. Less than year after that, they used the same property as collateral in a $15 million loan from the same bank to Kogan’s Kvoda Group. The house cost $18.5 million in 2005; its price, considering it has been stripped, has at best stayed level or, much more likely, hovers around $10 million to $11 million. It’s hard to say whether Valery Kogan’s oft-changing fortunes are at fault, but the would-be oligarch pleasure pad is currently leveraged two to one. Both loans mature on June 1. Much like the bubble itself, the would-be bane of Simmons Lane is now a castle in the sky, in hock to a hope for a brighter tomorrow.

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