TALE OF THE SALE BEHIND THE SCENES IN LOCAL REAL ESTATE

LISTING PRICE: $1.15 million

SELLING PRICE: $950,000

MAYBETHERE WILL BE A SPECIAL ON Dr Pepper at Minyards as soon as Liz Minyard and her husband. Paul Lokey, move into their new Preston Hollow home across the street from Julie and Jim Turner. (Jim is chairman and CEO of Dr Pepper Bottling Company.)

But the Lokeys have a long way to go before they can cut grocery deals with neighbors. Architect Bruce Birnbaum is busy drawing up plans to remodel, enlarge, and update the couple’s five-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot home. Built in 1936 by Jack Fox worth, the home had only seen one owner-the Foxworths-until the Lokeys closed in January. And the neighborhood, which lately resembles a bulldozer parking lot, should be glad the Lokeys are moving in. because they don’t have tear-down fever.

The brick and lumber home is built like a fortress: It sits on a 1.5-acre corner lot full of mature trees and ripe bushes. There’s even a cage in the backyard where Jack Foxworth tamed mountain lions and pumas. Foxworth, an avid hunter, often traveled to the Mexico-Arizona border and brought back orphaned lion and puma cubs, then gave them a home in his backyard until they could be adopted by the Dallas Zoo.

Liz says she plans to add on to the east wing of the home, convert the existing garage into more house area, and add a new garage.There’s also a rock-solid basement (a future wine cellar) and Foxworth’s hunting/gun room with a separate entrance-which will most likely become a powder room.

Inspired by other redos in the neighborhood, she and her husband are considering using stucco or stone with the existing exterior pink-toned brick. Her goal is a finished product with many bedrooms to hold grandbabies.

“When you put two sleeping babies in the same room, they wake each other up,” she says. “We need a lot of rooms. We’ve got a lot of grandchildren.”



THE HOUSE: 8602 Jordan Way

LISTING PRICE: $2.4 million

SELLING PRICE: $2,175 million

EVEN IN THE MOST CHIC PART OF OLD Preston Hollow, $2 million-plus seems pricey for 3.3 acres’ worth of dirt, water, and ducks. But this is the sought-after neighborhood where investment bankers can live in the woods yet jog to Starbucks or their Preston Center offices to buy and sell whatever it is they buy and sell. University Park residents Bill and Kayla Woodruff-he, the investment guru (William K. Woodruff & Company)- were apparently entranced by the lot’s elbow room: woodsy land where Deborah Humphries had torn down the old Neuhoff estate, an unpretentious, 1930s colonial with backyard pond and ducks. The Woodruffs snapped up the land in De-cember and are planning a modest, 10,000-square-foot, semi-retirement home.

Though the Woodruffs are low-profile, they join a neighborhood whose name roster already reads like a Who’s Who in the investment and business world: Ann (Smith) and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller, Mrs. Morton Sanger (of Sanger Harris). Norm and Kelly Green, Howard Rachof-sky, and Charles Wyly. More prominent names are also moving in: Candice and Bobby Haas (another investing whiz: Haas, Wheat & Partners) are still in North Dallas awaiting completion of their 10,000-plus-square-foot home thai swallowed two lots on the corner of Deloache and Jordan Way.

Perhaps (he most impressive development in this bigwig neighborhood is the Titanic being erected behind the yellow stucco wall on 8831 Preston Rd. at Deloache. Toxic torts/environmental attorney Frederick M. Baron and his wife Lisa Blue are the owners of the 30,000-square-foot. three-bedroom megaman-sion. designed by New York architect Robert A.M. Stern.

The Haases, too, selected a Big Apple architect to create their dream home: Peter Marino. Across the pond from Stern’s work-in-prog re s s is globally famed Richard Meier’s striking signature on the Rachofsky house-Meier designed the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. At this rate, design experts say these internationally acclaimed architects may turn this little stretch of Preston Hollow into one of the most architecturally famous parcels of residential land in the United Stales.