The late Michael Kittredge put the same verve into building up his property in western Massachusetts that he did in growing his candle-building empire.
The inspiration for a teenaged Kittredge to launch Yankee Candle came when he couldn’t afford to buy his mother a Christmas present, so he melted some crayons to make her a candle, according to the company’s website.
By the late 1980s, his homegrown business had expanded into an international phenomenon. Kittredge used some of his wealth to build a five-bedroom, 30,000-square foot Colonial-style house in rural Leverett, Massachusetts. Kittredge passed away in 2019, and his son, Michael Kittredge III, is now selling the property. Johnny Hatem of the real estate firm Douglas Elliman has listed it for sale with various other buildings for about $10 million. Altogether, there are 16 bedrooms and 25 bathrooms on the property, including several guest houses.
The other buildings on the sprawling 58-acre property, nicknamed "Juggler Meadow" for the road it’s on, include a pair of “barns” where Kittredge stored his car collection. There’s enough room inside for 65 cars. In another building, Kittredge housed an extensive collection of arcade games. Elsewhere, there’s an indoor waterpark, auditorium, bowling alley and a tennis court with a bar and fireplace off to the sides. Oh, and there’s also a nine-hole golf course.
The elder Kittredge initially bought a small lot with a modest house, then gradually acquired all the surrounding land over more than two decades, Hatem told Homes.com.
“The more money he made, the more land he bought and added on to the property,” he said. “He liked to make the things that he had better, rather than just replace them.”
While Kittredge wanted to have a playground for family members and friends to enjoy, a lot of the ideas for what he built came from family members and friends, Hatem said.
“One friend said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have an indoor basketball court,’ and another said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have an arcade?’” he said. “It was always a collective decision and he was the visionary who would execute it.”
Much about the property is scaled up or distinct from what a buyer might expect in a more typical home. Instead of one or two kitchen islands, Kittredge had five of them installed. The living room looks a bit like a university library reading room, with a second-story landing with bookshelves surrounding the ground-floor space. Rather than a standard office, Kittredge built one in an oval shape.
Years after a private equity firm acquired the company, the younger Kittredge formed a new candle-making venture, the Kringle Candle Co. In the past year, he has worked with a private developer on a potential plan to build a mix of market-rate and affordable housing on the site, but a sale to an individual buyer is more likely, Hatem said.
“For every developer call I get, there are five or six from wealthy individuals who have just sold their companies who might use the property a few weeks out of the year,” he said. “It could be used for corporate retreats or wedding venues. The possibilities are endless.”