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Monterra®…in the News

A Beautiful Building Block

The majesty of Monterra serves as the foundation for a lifelong dream
By Lisa Crawford Watson
Luxury Living Magazine
April/May 2007

Growing up, there was a time, while his dad was negotiating the Second World War, when his family bunked in a one-bedroom apartment and shared a single bathroom with the family across the hall. Once his father returned from overseas, the circumstances continued for a few more years while a boy with a mother and three sisters continued to wait endlessly for his turn in the bathroom.

It was during those hours in the hallway that Roger Mills made up his mind. Someday, if he could afford it, he was going to have a lot of bathrooms.

Sixty years later, on a verdant bluff overlooking the legendary Monterey Bay, a stone estate rises out of the California landscape like a rock outcropping amid a stand of live oaks. By design, it sits in harmony with the natural setting, this nearly 10,000-square-foot testament to tenacity, to toil and, with 11 bathrooms, to triumph.

"The house started out with a 7,000-square-foot design," says Mills. "But with seven grandchildren I got to thinking, if they all came to visit, four bedrooms might not be enough. With every bedroom, I added a bathroom, and the house grew from there."

Each bathroom, by design, tells a story of Mills' interests or affinity for a good book, a fine wine, a splendid seascape and the halcyon days of youth.

"Every single bedroom has a bathroom," says Mills, "and mine has two. There is a bathroom in the wine cellar so I don't have to climb the stairs, another accessed from the back yard, and a couple off the hall. We're never more than 20 yards from a bathroom. And, since we have our own water company, our own water and plenty of it, we can have 11 bathrooms."

There are 168 homesites (more than half of which are sold) communing with the landscape in Monterra, an upscale neighborhood he and older brother Basil Mills are developing across 1,750 acres of verdant palisades, wildflower meadows and brooding canyons under some big, big sky.

Monterra, which is a blend of Spanish words suggesting an alchemy of the mountains and the land, was purchased in the early 1980s by a group of investors from Australia, who envisioned 283 lots spread across almost 2,900 acres in what would become a luxury retreat for those who have "worked hard, been successful and are ready for a quiet sanctuary away from this busy world where they can enjoy gracious living," explains Mills.

But it takes a long time to get permits for an exclusive neighborhood in Monterey County. In this case, eight years to achieve all entitlements, one of which was to be self-sustaining, particularly, in this parched region of the country.

"This entitlement," says Mills, "meant digging wells and constructing a reverse osmosis plant to draw the salt out of the ocean water. It simply was too expensive. Out of money, in the early '90s, the investors put the property on the market. Some 10 or 11 developers all came to the same conclusion; it was tOO expensive to develop.

"But, by the time Basil and I took a look at it in 1995, a team in Saudi Arabia had perfected the reverse osmosis plant, and suddenly it made economic sense. We cook title on May 2, 1996."

During escrow, the Mills brothers were approached by Clint Eastwood's camp, who wanted to buy 1,000 acres on which to build an I8-hole golf course at the actor's contiguous Tehama country club and community.

"We worked out a deal for 1,060 acres," says Mills, "and got back 14 lots in Tehama, plus a couple of golf memberships for my brother and me. That," he jokes, "kinda clinched the deal."

Although the Tehama Golf Club is exclusive to private members, Monterra homeowners are granted a Tehama Golf Club Social Fitness Membership, which provides access to the Tehama Golf Clubhouse, including a private bar and gourmet dining room, as well as the new Tehama Fitness Center.

An architectural complement to the Tehama Golf Club, the Fitness Center, with its locally quarried stone and weighty wood structure, its subtle profile and open, expansive poolside patios, tennis courts and fitness features overlooking the great Carmel Valley, blend the exclusivity of old family money with the accessibility of new fortune.

"The Tehama Golf Club Social Fitness Membership is one way to bring Monterra homeowners together," says Mills, "and create the kind of community where people can enjoy one another."

Another community center quickly becoming a social hub in Monterra is Mills' own home. Cresting a long and sweeping drive, the Carmel Stone fortress is imposing only in its grandeur; it is actually quite welcoming to the Monterra community.

"We actually designed the house to be an entertainment center. With 25 families living here, we wanted to host activities for the homeowners that would help them create a sense of community."

Just past the grand entry, with its cathedral ceiling whose dome houses a custom mural, the expansive living room has become a clubhouse of sorts. Once a month, homeowners and their families congregate among the plush furnishings to enjoy Mills' favorite spaghetti Westerns, accompanied by fresh popcorn and pizza. A kids' movie plays in the nearby den, whose dark, heavy wood, rough-hewn fireplace and rustic furnishings resemble a men's club or lodge.

Food is prepared in a presentation kitchen, complete with two refrigerators hidden behind cabinetry panels, plus additional refrigerator drawers housed within the center island. Work spaces are surfaced in polished granite, punctuated by various prep sinks and a six-burner Thermador stove.

An adjacent room provides additional prep space, as well as four pull-out pantry racks and a dumbwaiter, designed to serve the upstairs bedroom suites, currently acting as architectural review offices, as well as the downstairs wine cellar and adjacent bedroom suites, also functioning as offices during the development of Monterra.

The upstairs suites are accessed via an unobtrusive stairway scaling the back side of the estate, while the wine cellar and lower suites are reached by a winding staircase entered through secret paneled doors off the main hallway.

But here, above a verdant landscape rolling toward the rugged California coastline, amid a complement of rough, weighty textures juxtaposed with elegant fixtures and fabrications, among a series grand rooms filled with stately and sumptuous furnishings, it is the bathrooms, actually, that offer both the greatest indulgence and the comforts of home.

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