Segal estate finds buyer; landscape preservationists cringe

In what is possibly the most depressing real estate news of the year, the Sun-Times reported yesterday, with a follow-up today, that Orren Pickell Designers & Builders is in negotiation to purchase the property in Highland Park originally built as the A. G. Becker estate — which we reported on here some weeks ago — but more commonly known as the home of insurance magnate Mickey Segal, now serving time for racketeering and fraud.

In the past decade or so, the Pickell enterprise has been responsible for some of the most egregious examples of over-sized, over-embellished palaces and castles on teardown sites throughout the North Shore.

The residence itself, designed by Howard Van Doren Shaw, one of the great country house architects of the early 20th century, has been greatly altered over the decades. But the spectacular Jens Jensen-designed landscape remains pretty much the way it’s been for 80 plus years. Up at the $20-million price range, the market is exceedingly thin, and it was simply wishful thinking to hope that a deep-sockets savior savior would rise to buy the estate — unique as what is certainly the largest intact parcel of lakefront property in the area — and maintain it as a single-family property. Market economics, as ever, will prevail.

The only question now seems to be exactly how many of Pickell’s monstrous confections will sully the landscape.

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