Mercer Island mansions fate touches off development debate

For about 30 years, the Coval House has stood on a wooded, 5-acre estate as one of Mercer Islands dream homes. Its owners, research scientists Myer and Barbara Coval, lavished so much money on landscaping, rooms and a tropical pool that HGTV showcased the home on its Million Dollar Rooms show.

Cathedral-like ceilings are built with wood shipped from the Republic of Congo and Costa Rica. The landscape includes more than 300 trees, an organic fruit orchard and a koi pond.

The amenities of a $10 million pool are so intricate, it took contractors five years to finish.

You step inside, and it just blows you away and the swimming pool room is out of this world, said Linda Chaves, 63, a neighbor whos been invited to the home occasionally for neighborhood parties.

Now the estate is close to becoming the exact opposite of all that: A proposal the Mercer Island City Council says it will decide Monday night could make the property the largest residential development on the island since the 1980s.

The proposal from a developer buying the property, MI 84th Limited Partnership, registered in Washington under Garth Schlemlein, would level the mansion and much of its landscape to build 18 single-family homes in its place. The developer would also chop the top off a hill on the property that is close to a steep slope, prompting some neighbors to worry about the hill becoming destabilized.

Chaves said she imagined the property would become some kind of development because it seemed the Covals had trouble selling it since it went on the market in 2011 with an initial listing price of $15.5 million.

The Covals were devastated by not being able to find a buyer who would invest in preserving the property as is, said David Paul Eck, who spent years designing much of the homes interior. He said they at first refused to believe an appraiser who said only a developer would likely ever take on the property. But after two years of no serious offers, they reluctantly agreed the appraiser was right.

We tried hard to find somebody of a like mind, but the world doesnt turn that way anymore, said Eck. Nobody stepped up.

But because Chaves and others didnt expect the development to so drastically change the landscape, theyve banded together in hopes that the next phase of life for the property can keep some semblance of its last.

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Mercer Island mansions fate touches off development debate