The Dawkins estate in Rumson, as seen from the Navesink by redbankgreen in 2008. (Click to enlarge)
Let us stipulate right up front that Pete Dawkins does everything on a scale most of us mortals can only gape at in wonder.
Don’t know who he is? Check out his exhaustively comprehensive monument-to-self website, one befitting his numerous achievements: 1958 Heisman Trophy winner. Rhodes scholar. Retired Army brigadier general. Wall Street bigwig. Onetime contender for U.S. Senate.
A decade ago, when Dawkins and his wife, Judith, bought the Rumson estate called Long Point from the widow of an heir to the A&P supermarket fortune, they plunked down $4.5 million and promptly tore down the existing mansion, replacing it with a 20,000-square-foot home on a spit of land jutting out into the Navesink River.
Now, in keeping with his appetite for the biggest and best, Dawkins has put the place up for sale at a price that, if obtained, would crush the previous high price in the region, a knowledgeable broker tells redbankgreen.
Asking price: $29.9 million. Previous record: $13.2 million, for a Navesink River Road estate in Middletown, in 2005.
“Even that land, if you have a solid-gold house on it, you just don’t get to that number around here,” a high-end broker who asked not to be named says of the Dawkins price. “But somebody could come along and pay cash at that amount.”
According to information at Turpin Realtors, which has the listing, the house sits on 10.4 riverfront acres and was designed by architects at Shope Reno Wharton in Connecticut. It has five bedrooms, seven full and four half-baths, and garage space for six vehicles.
Monmouth County records show the house is assessed at $9.5 million. Turpin says the property generated $134,698 in property taxes last year.
A message left for the Dawkinses was not immediately returned.
Five bedrooms? You can get 13 of ’em for a fraction of the price over at Rohallion, the Stanford White designed mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Rumson that’s listed for a mere $5.9 million. Of course, that one doesn’t have any waterfront, though it is across the street from the Springsteens.
Two other big-ticket properties in town (5 North Ward Avenue, at $6.75 million, and 132 Bingham Avenue, at $9.5 million) boast six and seven bedrooms, respectively.
Sure to be watching the sale closely are Mickey and Diane Gooch, the Dawkins’ next door neighbors. The Gooches and Dawkinses were involved in a long-running dispute over a poolhouse that wound up going to the state appeals court level.
Characteristically, perhaps, Dawkins came out the winner in that one, too.
