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Saying Goodbye to Your Island
By Islomaniac | July 31, 2007
A recent article published on Star Tribune.com features an island for sale. Not anything new for newspapers. What I like about this article is that the island owners open up about their island and their island home, something rare considering most owners take pride in their privacy. They talk about how they found their island, how they fell in love with it and the difficult decision to sell. Click below to read the article.
Bald Eagle Island
Source:
Eric M Hanson
Star Tribune
Lake views from the laundry room,” the Van Brunts’ real estate agent joked.
Actually, there are lake views from virtually every room, in a 360-degree radius, in this home on Bald Eagle Lake in White Bear Township — every room but the raquetball court.
The house with the address 1 Bald Eagle Island is among the best situated in Minnesota, alone on a boat-shaped 4.5-acre private island that juts up from roughly 1,000 acres of surrounding lake.
After having lived in their large, eccentric home since building it in 1986, owners Nick and Jane Van Brunt have put it on the market. (They did so a few years ago, but later decided not to sell, delayed by a business venture.)
“I’m going to miss the people more than the house,” Jane Van Brunt said. “The house has some nostalgia, too. … But the people around Bald Eagle are so much fun that I really hate to leave them.”
A novel challenge for builders
The couple bought the island after having lived on the shore of the lake for about seven years. Nick, an engineer and technology entrepreneur, used to look at it when sailing.
“Boy, that would be a really interesting project,” he remembers thinking when the island, which was privately owned but unoccupied, came up for sale.
Nick told Jane about the island’s availability. Her first reaction, she said, was to dismiss it.
But by the next morning, she had changed her mind.
So they bought it, then negotiated for about a year and a half with the township and Rice Creek Watershed District to get a building permit. Cement trucks, a crane, an excavator and other trucks carrying thousands of pounds of gravel were driven across during the winter. Other materials went over by boats and a barge.
“It was an interesting challenge,” Nick said with dry understatement. “They hadn’t ever built a house on an island anywhere in Ramsey County, and people weren’t sure what the issues were, and wanted to be cautious.”
At about 9,000 square-feet, the three-level home includes four bedrooms and seven bathrooms, three fireplaces, the racquetball court, an indoor hot tub and a media room, and multiple decks with views in every direction.
In the back yard, secluded from the mainland behind rows of elms, oak, linden and ash trees, is a gazebo and a croquet court that overlooks a pathway leading down to the place where the Van Brunts dock their hovercraft, when it’s in use.
In the summer, they use a boat to get from the mainland to their home. In the winter, they drive or use snowmobiles. But there are those times — roughly three weeks in early winter and again in spring — when a hovercraft can be the best solution.
The hovercraft is staying, but the Van Brunts are preparing to leave, after having raised two boys on the island, which also has been home to some cats and a pet rooster.
For a number of years, the house was the site of the Van Brunts “proms,” large themed parties that grew to include up to 150 guests. One year, with a New York City theme, they erected a 40-foot replica Statue of Liberty.
Some novel features
Though the couple says it became routine to live on the island long ago, the home has some unique features because of its location and Nick’s love of solving problems.
It is equipped with a septic system and two wells, for drinking and also for the house’s geothermal heat pump.
Its 100 or so windows are designed as a passive solar heat system, creating energy efficiency that was ahead of the curve in 1986 and leaves the Van Brunts’ annual utility bill at around $750.
To prevent fire, the home is equipped with a lightning-protection system, a sprinkler system and fire-retardant materials such as concrete and masonry — which also keeps it warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer.
“It’s extremely private,” Nick said. “An awful lot of the year it feels like being on a lake up north someplace.”
The couple isn’t tired of island living — they are simply moving on to a larger one: the Big Island of Hawaii.
“I’m getting close to retirement age,” Nick said. “It will probably be fun just to try someplace completely different for a while. … It will be fun to do another one that is completely unique.”
A little more than 20 years after the Van Brunt family built their island home on Bald Eagle Lake, they are preparing to leave the nest. Yours for $3.5 million.
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