Pretty Penny Lane

Scott Dickensheets

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1998 | 9:26 a.m.

The woman in the sun dress was making a house call: "Tell Daddy," she cooed into her open cellular, "that I'm in the house we're going to live in."

Don't pack your Legos yet, kid, she's joking! After all, she was strolling through the plush upstairs rooms of Tapestry, the third house in the tres-luxurious Street of Dreams model homes; the carpeting alone is worth more than the gross national product of Rhode Island. OK, maybe we shouldn't judge a checkbook by its cover, but nothing about the sun-dressed woman suggested she was capable of laying down the $1.7 million (not including furnishings) it would take to move in.

It was just as well she was talking to her child; had she tried to describe the pricey house and its luxe furnishings to her spouse -- the ultimate in yuppie phone sex -- she would have quickly run out of adequate descriptives. If there is such a thing as being bludgeoned by opulence, this is it. Check the baby's room in House No. 1: $1,400 Celeste bed, $600 chenille club chair -- oh, and don't forget the $200 ottoman. How many words are there for "Ohmygosh"?

"Holy cow!" That was another woman as she entered Villa Siena's two-story master closet. Two stories -- it's a closet! Her thoughts were evident on her face: So this is what it's like on the other side of the income divide.

That was undoubtedly a common realization Sunday at Street of Dreams, a five-home extravaganza of expensive real estate (valley views as far as the eye can see), expensive architecture (living rooms as far as the eye can see) and expensive interior decoration (showpiece furniture as far as the eye can see) in Henderson's Seven Hills neighborhood. For $7.50 a head, the tract-home crowd can gawk at all the "stunning circular great rooms," "exquisite mosaic tile work," "distinctive columns" and "stunning 'Golden Ray' Arizona flagstone flooring" that five big houses can contain.

The event (it continues through Oct. 25) is organized by the Seattle-based Street of Dreams Inc., a company that goes around the country persuading developers to build better homes and gardens, showcasing the latest and least affordable in contemporary living. Since 1985, there have been 56 Street of Dreams "tours" in North America

For the Seven Hills event, Street of Dreams lined up five developers -- Vision Craft Homes, Martin Homes/Lakes Development, Sun West Custom Homes, Bradivan Development Group -- to erect custom homes (Vision Craft did two). They range in price from $1.6 million to more than $2 million.

"If I had a couple million, I'd buy this," said Ivan Friedmutter -- the Ivan in Bradivan Development -- of Trevista, the house he'd built. He was leaning on the balcony outside the second-floor child's room, taking in the view: the first hole of the Rio Secco golf course in the foreground, the Las Vegas cityscape in the middle distance, and, far away, the mountains rimming the valley. Spectacular, all right, but Friedmutter's seen better. "The view from the master balcony is the best," he said.

The first home in the attraction is Vision Craft's French Provincial, a 6,723-square-foot Old Worldish place that features "hand-carved and tumbled khaki sandstone exterior blocks" -- they certainly sound impressive, whatever they are. The house sets the tone for the rest of the Street: lots of space, plush surroundings, dramatic pool area and enough sitting rooms, drawing rooms, wine rooms, sunken wet bars, libraries and miscellaneous nooks that you'd need a map to get to the bathroom. Do all provincial French live this way?

"It's for someone who wants a traditional layout, but wants a lot of nice finishes," says Daniel Berg, Vision Craft president. It's also for someone who wants to spend $1.6 million.

Vision Craft's other home -- the fourth house on the tour -- is The Beach, a modern home with a funkier California vibe. "It's more of a fun, living-on-vacation type of style," Berg says. True to its beach theme, the five-level waterfall pool laps up against the glass back doors. The light wood flooring are meant to impart a boardwalk feel, the slate accents represent beachside rocks and the carpeting evokes sand. The price: $1.9 million.

House No. 2 is an Italianate villa by Martin Homes and Lake Development. The front door opens onto a huge rotunda living room, its domed ceiling soaring 23 feet above the limestone floor. The stone accents, the Mediterranean murals, the ancient-looking pots tumbled stylishly in one corner -- it's almost like 7,350 square feet of Tuscany! But try to imagine a kid with a peanut butter sandwich anywhere in it. Eat that over the sink, Billy! Price: $2.4 million.

"Is this the neighborhood shower?" murmured a viewer in House No. 3, Sun West's Tapestry. It was that large -- three shower heads! Down the hallway and out through a side door is a detached library/office, just the place to get away when the rest of the 6,467 square feet of hand-carved mouldings, custom tile work and flagstone flooring starts pressing in on you. Two walls retract to set up an indoor-outdoor dynamic between the living room and the pool patio. With its state-of-the-art media room ("full-screen projector and surround sound"!), double-island kitchen and bidet, Tapestry is a steal at $1.8 million.

The fifth house is Bradivan's Trevista, announced by the bubbling faux stream and pond out front. Out back is a vanishing-edge pool, meant, says Friedmutter, to evoke help an Old World oceanside retreat. Like the other houses, it has every expensive touch and flourish known to man -- high ceilings, luxury spaces (odd, not-very-functional nooks that say I've got square footage to burn!), pantries the size of former Soviet republics.

If you ask the home builders, naturally, visitors are easily getting their $7.50 worth. Berg says he's attended other Streets of Dreams, and darned if this one isn't beams and balconies above the rest. "This is the best five homes together I've seen in any show," he says.

"All the houses 'put out,' " Friedmutter says. "No one took any shortcuts." In fact, they took longcuts. "We've been working on this for a year," he adds.

Why? After all, the houses were built on spec, with no guarantee of a buyer. What's in it for the developer?

Future contracts. Street of Dreams Inc. predicts each show home will generate five contracts for its builder over the next two years. According to the company's voodoo math, the event will drain $53 million into the local economy in terms of future construction, sales by the show's interior designers and, of course, the purchases of the five original homes.

Berg had a nibble from a guy interested in the Beach on Sunday, the second day the show was open. Just a nibble, mind you, but -- and yeah, you can't judge a checkbook, etc. -- he looked promising. "He was wearing a $30,000 gold watch, $500 shoes, a $500 belt, you know. I think he's for real."