New snag for Whittell Mansion buyout plan

Saturday, Jan. 11, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

Babbitt spokesman Mike Gauldin said Friday that the interior secretary "liked the general outline" of a plan to let Nevada's university system acquire the buildings on the 140-acre site, leaving the land itself in federal hands.

But Gauldin added Babbitt "decided he would prefer to continue to work with the Nevada congressional delegation on (federal) land sale legislation that they have proposed."

"If an agreement can be reached on this legislation, it would enable Interior to consider this proposal and other proposals in a more deliberate and organized manner," he said.

Harriet Burgess of the American Land Conservancy, which has been pushing the Whittell proposal, said her concern is that continued delays may result in the loss of the property - the largest privately owned estate at Tahoe.

Burgess also said she was surprised at Babbitt's reluctance to move ahead with the estate deal since she was advised he had determined earlier this week that it would be legal and that he was in favor of it.

"It breaks my heart to lose this opportunity," added Burgess, whose organization has an option on the property that expires in March.

The estate has been owned since the early 1970s by mutual fund tycoon and philanthropist Jack Dreyfus Jr. Dreyfus already has extended the ALC's option twice on the isolated property located on Tahoe's east shore.

The ALC had been told earlier that the land wasn't the cause of federal agency misgivings about the deal. Instead, it was the prospect of high maintenance costs on buildings on the property.

The estate includes a three-story, medieval-style French chateau with a 500-foot-long secret tunnel entrance, a cavernous boathouse, manmade waterfall, a lighthouse, three guest chalets and other stone structures.

Burgess then came up with a proposal to let the University and Community College System of Nevada acquire the buildings for $3.5 million. The land would go for $46.5 million.

Under the plan, Nevada's university system would work with the University of California at Davis in turning the estate into a Lake Tahoe research center.

But the universities would have to "promise not to lock up the buildings as a think-tank," said Burgess, adding that the public would have access to the structures and not just the land.

The key to the deal is Las Vegas-area land owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management and eagerly sought by developers.

What the ALC wants is to facilitate a complicated transaction that would result in the BLM lands in Las Vegas being sold or auctioned, the proceeds going to Dreyfus, and the title to the lavish estate going to the federal government.

The deal has been a top priority for the U.S. Forest Service's Tahoe office. Under initial plans, that agency would end up with the property.

The estate's historic "Thunderbird Lodge" and other granite-faced structures were built between 1938 and 1941 by the late George Whittell, a quirky recluse and one-time San Francisco land baron.

The flamboyant Whittell, who died in the late 1960s, liked to host all-night card parties in one of the guest chalets and reportedly lost $100,000 in a single evening.

He also kept wild animals, including lions, tigers and a baby elephant, at the estate.