SanFranChronicle

The Villa That Oracle Built Ellison proceeds with dream digs despite market setbacks

Peter Sinton, Chronicle Senior Writer Tuesday, March 27, 2001

Forget about Xanadu and Kubla Khan. In Woodside did Larry Ellison a stately pleasure dome decree. Never mindthat Oracle Corp., which Ellison leads, recently lowered profit forecasts and announced plans to cut costs by trimming 900 jobs. Or the fact that as high-tech stocks have cratered, his 23 percent stake in the world's second-largest software company has dipped to about $20 billion in value from $40 billion two months ago and close to $60 billion last September.

Work on the flamboyant chief executive officer's 23-acre Japanese-style imperial villa just up the hill from Stanford's linear accelerator proceeds without letup or layoffs.

The price tag has more than doubled from a $40 million estimate five years ago, making Ellison's island perhaps the priciest pad in one of Silicon Valley's most exclusive enclaves.

"It is the biggest development in Woodside," said town Planning Director David Rizk. "It's unique in magnitude, materials and architectural design."

The figures and features are impressive:

-- About 81,000 cubic yards of earth, enough to raise an entire football field 45 feet high, were moved and massaged to make way for ponds, hills and islands. A 2.7-acre main pond with a meandering 3,200-foot shoreline will be fed by two waterfalls cascading from a half-acre upper pond.

-- More than 500 mature cherry, maple and other trees have been imported to supplement about 700 existing redwoods, pines, oaks and other species. To re- create traditional Japanese-style gardens, thousands of shrubs and an estimated 5,000 tons of boulders were hauled in, some weighing as much as 60 tons and one seconding as a hot tub.

-- Ten buildings are going up on the Mountain Home Road site. These include a main 7,841-square-foot main residence with underground parking and three wings connected by walkways that overlook the 2.7-acre lower pond that should be filled with water by next winter.

-- Bridges and pathways lead to a teahouse, moon pavilion, guesthouse, bridge house, boathouse, barn and "Katsura house," a made-in-Japan near replica of a famous teahouse built as part of a royal compound of the same name in Kyoto, Japan, in the early 1600s.

-- About 3,750 tons of hand-chiseled Chinese granite, 150 25-ton container loads, were imported for use in retaining walls, facing for a steel-reinforced concrete bridge and other construction.

SOME IRRITATION

Some neighbors have been irked by the dust, din and duration of the project and have worried about potential negative impact to the water table. Some quietly agree with the New York Times reporter who early on dubbed the project "a $40 million conceit."

But those who soon will live near Ellison generally compliment him and his first-class architects and construction team for careful planning and execution.

"Everything passed (with the planning department) quite easily," said one adjacent landowner who preferred to remain anonymous. "He did a good job of going to neighbors with his plans and doing everything in the appropriate way."

The town of Woodside placed 48 conditions on its approval of the site development permit, requested by Ellison's Octopus Holdings L.P. These and other documents fill two of the 28 large file drawers Woodside's planning and building department devotes to current projects.

FUSING OLD AND NEW

One of the early concerns was how to fuse traditional Japanese and modern building techniques to create buildings, bridges and 3.2 acres of ponds -- just 2,000 feet from the San Andreas Fault -- that could withstand a magnitude 7.3 earthquake. More than $1 million was spent just on geologic work, including design of a catch basin below the ponds to hold water that might slosh over during an earthquake.

A half-dozen low-yield wells were drilled to supplement rainwater in filling the ponds and twice as many monitoring wells were bored to ensure that the water table is not adversely affected. Arrangements also were made to buy water from California Water Service during the fall and other periods when water is in tight supply.

Another thorny issue was what to do with a historic 1913 house on the property built by Julia Morgan, the famed architect who built a castle near San Simeon for William Randolph Hearst. By paying a $50,000 deposit to Woodside and agreeing to dismantle, store and relocate the original parts of the house, Ellison won permission to proceed.

Ellison's crew also agreed to pay $20 an hour to a member of the Amah Mutsun tribal band of Ohlone Indians during grading of the property in 1996 and 1999 in case Native American remains or artifacts turned up. (No bones were found but various items were cataloged, including a Worcestershire sauce bottle circa 1880-1920. Twenty-nine prehistoric artifacts such as mortars and milling slabs were discovered and donated to the tribe and Woodside.

DETAILS KEY

Ellison and project manager Kenneth Morrison of San Francisco's Rockridge Group declined Chronicle requests for interviews, but several others involved with the project described its complexity and astounding attention to detail.

"It's going to be incredible," said Paul Discoe, a Buddhist priest and owner of Joinery Structures in Oakland, which has 50 craftsmen working on the project. "It's a project based on a foreign model but adapted for use in California."

Discoe's crew hand-mills Port Orford cedar from Oregon and other natural woods into beams and other components that are hand-planed and joined on the site without use of nails or other machine-made materials. Sandpaper is also verboten.

Most of the buildings, including the main residence, remain under gigantic tarps, not for secrecy but to shield the bare surfaces from the weather until the roofs are finished.

The so-called "Katsura House" structure was actually created in Japan as a knockoff of the architectural treasure Shokintei teahouse, with its thatched gable roof. To suit Americans' size and Ellison's sensibilities, the 1,500- square-foot pondside structure is actually 10 percent larger than the original.

Rather than relying on charcoal braziers, the building is being outfitted with a modern kitchen and plumbing.

However, the rustic rush roof remains a key part of the design and that has caused problems. First, U.S. agriculture inspectors balked at bringing in all Japanese grasses for the 18-inch-thick roof. Comparable materials were found in Poland.

Then fire department officials balked at the flammable roofing materials. Three Japanese craftsmen flown over for the two-month installation job had to temporarily return home until Ellison's engineers found ways to impregnate the thatch materials with fire retardants and meet fire safety codes.

"Mr. Ellison has incredible vision and has been absolutely fearless in trying new things and nothing scares him," said Discoe. "It's always full steam ahead."

FANCY FURNISHINGS

Furniture that fits with tatami mat flooring is being specially designed as well as electrical outlets that can be hidden in the floors since there are few traditional walls.

San Leandro's Ron Herman Landscape Architects has been working on the project for five years and office manager Sheldon Yee wouldn't be surprised if the project continues for another two years.

The original completion date was supposed to be summer 1999. But Ellison's dream house, like the man himself, runs late.

That's good news for dozens of artisans such as Japanese-born master rock setter Shigeru Namba, who has said such large-scale projects no longer exist in Japan. It's not every day, or lifetime, that Namba gets to build a master bathroom around a 60,000-pound boulder.

This is not the first time the sybaritic Ellison has expressed his edifice complex. He also completely remodeled a multimillion-dollar house on a stretch of Broadway in San Francisco known as the Gold Coast, and created a smaller Japanese-style estate in Atherton that he plans to sell when the Woodside project is completed.

Ellison also has some cash reserves. In January, he sold close to $900 million of Oracle stock, when the shares were trading for double their current price. (Some shareholders have since filed insider trading charges against Oracle's 56-year-old CEO, alleging that he sold the shares before disclosing that Oracle's sales and earnings were slowing significantly. Ellison has denied any wrongdoing.)

NOT THE BIGGEST

Ellison's ambitious new estate is by no means the largest in tech-dom. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates' home in Medina, Wash., is 48,160 square feet and is being expanded. One difference is that Woodside imposes a firm 8,000-square- foot limit on a main residence, but Ellison's project definitely will cost more per square foot than Gates' home.

"These successful people naturally have a rivalry," said Berkeley architect Bruce Dodd. "It's interesting if it's expressed in architecture."

Ellison's Woodside Estate

-- The project: Transform 23 acres in Woodside into Japanese-style imperial villa with 10 hand-crafted buildings, bridges, manicured gardens, ponds, waterfalls and islands.

-- Price tag: Reportedly approaching $100 million, up from $40 million estimate in 1996, with two years to go.

-- Pond scheme: 2.7-acre lower pond and half-acre upper pond will hold 3.9 million gallons. Annual evaporation and seepage estimated at 5.9 million gallons.

-- Imported materials: 5,000 tons of Yuba River boulders, 3,750 tons of hand-chiseled Chinese granite, thousands of shrubs and 522 trees, including 178 Japanese and flowering cherry, 42 ginkgo and 17 big leaf maple.

-- Property taxes: $411,290.44 for 2000

Sources: Woodside Planning Department, Chronicle research

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001