Florida Mansion Claim to Greenness is Relative

This article was originally published by Technorati on 3 March 2010.

Frank McKinney is a consummate salesman and he has a 15,000 square foot mansion to move.

Nestled among the palms on a 1.6-acre lot that strides a span from the Atlantic Ocean to the Inter-Coastal Waterway in Palm Beach, Florida, the asking price for his creation, which he calls Acqua Liana is $24.3 million. That's down from its original asking price of $29 million.

Frank calls himself a "real estate artist," and thus his creations art. Calling a building art connotes an expectation of lasting appeal. Will anyone care about this house a hundred years from now? Check out this video and decide for yourself.

There is a slickness to this video. The property is actually not on the Inter-coastal Waterway. It's on the A1A Highway, across which is the ICW.

And its claim to greenness is relative in the extreme. Considering that the average home in the U.S. weighs in at less than 2,500 square feet, when Frank says Aqua Liana has the carbon footprint of a normal house one third its size, that's still more than twice as much as the average.

So if you're in the market for a 24-million-dollar mansion, keep these things in mind.

But Frank is a genuinely good guy. His charity, The Caring House Project, funds housing projects throughout the third world.

In all he does, McKinney thinks big. His charity is no different. With the realization that he's made lots of wealthy friends, Frank lists donation buttons on his website for as much as $125,000.

His book The Tap details his views on responsible stewardship and leading a God-centered life.