A lakeshore retiree is preparing to part with the home he designed a decade ago in his own personal paradise on the Kalamazoo River.
Ross Hanley, a retired landscape designer who worked in metro Detroit during his career, listed his sprawling contemporary farmhouse situated on nearly 10 acres in Saugatuck Township for $2.35 million on March 21.
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Realtors Bill Underdown and Clement Beaudoin, of Century 21 in Douglas, have the listing.
The property includes a 4,700-square-foot main residence with three bedrooms, three full baths and two half baths, and a nearly 1,800-square-foot pole barn-turned-accessory dwelling unit that contains a garage and two apartments that are currently leased.
Hanley bought the property in 2013 and personally designed the house, which was completed in early 2015. The builder was Rick Haver, of Haver Fine Homes in Saugatuck.
The main house consists of three connected structures that Hanley said he was inspired to create because of the rural setting on the Kalamazoo River, near Allegan County farm country. He named the property “New Farm,” which he said encapsulates his vision.
“It was a beautiful, beautiful piece of property, and so that was the inspiration, and I didn’t want a house that stood out for some particular reason. I wanted a house that fit into the landscape,” he said. “The main piece that joins them is a silo, then another structure is a pitched roof barn, and the other is a barrel roof barn. (They’re) structures that you could identify with the farming community around West Michigan.”
When Hanley bought the property, he built the pitched roof part of the house on the foundation of a 1986 home that had already been torn down except for the concrete pad. He then added the silo with a circular central staircase — which he loves to climb for birdwatching — and the barrel-roofed wing for extra living space.
The home boasts what Hanley calls an “ultramodern” interior, with plenty of windows and aluminum trim accents and hardware. He opted for bright white gallery walls to showcase his personal art collection.
He then used leftover materials from the house to convert the pole barn into a guest house/ADU.
Hanley said he would love to stay because of his love for the property, but health issues are forcing him to downsize.
“(I love) looking out over the river. It is just the most beautiful setting over the Kalamazoo River, with all of the nature that surrounds the house here — mostly birds. I’m crazy about birds,” he said, adding with a laugh that his art collection can attest to his passion for all things avian.
Underdown, Hanley’s Realtor, said the listing didn’t garner much interest when Hanley attempted to sell it about five years ago for nearly $2.5 million, so he and Beaudoin priced it lower and are also coming at it from a “new tilt” by marketing it to artists and creatives in Detroit, Chicago and on the East Coast.
“We’re in the artist community (in Saugatuck-Douglas), and it’s an incredible house to showcase art,” Underdown said. “It’s full of light. It’s got incredible views of the Kalamazoo River and the bayou. You can see endlessly, all the way to Mount Baldhead, which is kind of fun, so you get some great sunset views from there. And it’s not only a great place to showcase art within the grounds and inside the house, but it also is an incredible place to just feel the art of the house itself.”
He pointed to features like the little bridge porch guests have to walk over to get to the home’s entrance, as well as the silo birdwatching tower and the separate living spaces in different structures as some of the top selling points.
“It’s a great place to entertain and to have family and friends,” he said, adding that the large amount of acreage gives the place a “getaway feeling” while also being less than 10 minutes from downtown Saugatuck.
Underdown said the “fresh start” approach to marketing the house, which includes a video walkthrough, new photos and print advertising in Century 21 brochures and the Saugatuck Center for the Arts playbill, have yielded more interest in the property, with multiple showings since last month.
The seller has a couple of interested parties mulling offers, though nothing is in writing yet.
“I think it’s just a really exciting house,” he said. “We’ll see where it goes.”
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