The Charlottean who bought Prince's Caribbean mansion
Plus: Ledger fails to get rich after NFT auction ends; Meet the impressive judges for the 2022 40 Over 40 awards; Does this winter seem colder to you?; At-home Covid tests return to libraries
Good morning! Today is Monday, Feb. 7, 2022. You’re reading The Charlotte Ledger, an e-newsletter with local business-y news and insights for Charlotte, N.C.
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Private equity CEO bought rock star’s Turks and Caicos estate and now rents it out for $12,000 to $36,000 a night; Purple tennis court, driveway
Prince reportedly bought the estate to the right in this photo in 2011 for $10.5M and owned it until his death in 2016. Charlottean Tom Barnes purchased it in 2019 and later also bought the home on the left in the photo. He renovated both to become the Emara estate, which became available to rent last month. (Photos courtesy of Emara/Tom Barnes)
by Cristina Bolling
Charlottean Tom Barnes was on the hunt for a beachfront home big enough to host large family gatherings on the Caribbean island of Turks and Caicos, and in 2019 he found the perfect one — an estate with sweeping views on a peninsula that had been owned by the late pop star Prince.
Fast forward three years, and Barnes has also purchased the home next door and completed a massive renovation on both to create Emara, a stunning 17-bedroom, 20,000 s.f., 8-acre private estate that just became available for rent last month from $12,000 to $36,000 a night. (The price varies depending on whether you want to rent one house, or both, and the dates you want to book.)
Barnes, chief executive of 319 Capital Partners, a private equity and investment firm based in Charlotte, made headlines in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post in 2019 when he spent $10.8M for Prince’s mansion. (Interestingly, no Charlotte media seemed to pick up on it at the time.)
The home was irresistible for its breathtaking setting and privacy, Barnes, 54, told The Ledger last week, and the fact that it had been owned by Prince was the cherry on top.
“There’s an incredible cool factor that Prince lived there,” he said.
Prince enjoyed total privacy while vacationing on his Turks and Caicos estate. And now, guests can too.
In his multimillion-dollar renovation of the property, which included both design changes and repairs due to damage from 2017’s Hurricane Irma, “no floor, wall or ceiling went untouched,” Barnes said.
Yet nods to the home’s former owner, who died in 2016, remain: the driveway to the estate remains stained in purple, as do the tennis courts. There’s a purple-topped billiards table, two mirrors in the dining room that remain from Prince’s tenure, a collection of Prince memorabilia and tasteful decorative touches of his signature regal color.
“We have fun with the whole Prince thing,” Barnes said.
A stay at Emara means the royal treatment: two chefs — one of whom Barnes said cooked for Prince himself — three butlers, four housekeeping staff, a concierge and round-the-clock security. Staff get to know how guests take their coffee in the morning and design meals around their preferences, Barnes said, whether it’s dinner for 20 at the dining room table, or a crab boil on the beach.
Photos show bedrooms and bathtubs that look out over crystal blue waves, verandas that appear perfect for morning coffees or evening nightcaps, and the promise of total privacy as you relax and unwind.
Fifteen of the estate’s 17 bedrooms have a water view, and it’s designed to sleep 34 comfortably in beds, or “over 40 if people wanted to rack-and-stack,” Barnes said. “Everybody staying there is loving life.”
As of Sunday, motocross pro Corey Radcliff appeared to be staying on the property, and indeed, loving life. He posted a video late last week on his Instagram stories of his group being greeted by staff bearing purple cocktails upon their arrival, and later posted videos of himself enjoying a charcuterie board while sitting in an infinity pool overlooking the ocean, playing tennis on the purple tennis court, enjoying an outdoor chef-prepared dinner with his group and taking in sweeping views off a waterfront balcony.
SLEEP LIKE A KING, PLAY POOL LIKE A PRINCE: Fifteen of Emara’s 17 bedrooms have views of the ocean (like the one in the top photo). The purple pool table is a nod to the estate’s former owner.
The estate’s name, Emara, is not a holdover from Prince, but is a name that Barnes said he gave it.
The “mar” portion of the name comes from the Spanish word for ocean (Barnes was born in Mexico), and “ara” is a nod to the many beachy places with “ara” in their name, which “gives you the feeling you’re in a tropical place,” he said. Barnes and his wife have two sons in their 20s, one of whom is named Ethan, hence the “E” in Emara.
Guests at Emara can rent the entire compound or can opt for just the Prince house, or the house next door.
Barnes said he was unable to travel there at all in 2020 because of Covid, and the busy run-up to open the property for rental last month meant he has been doing more work there and less relaxing during his most recent visits. But he said he’ll take some time to unwind at Emara in March and again in June when he and his wife host her big extended family.
He envisions Emara as a spot that will be ideal for celebrity guests, or anyone who wants to unwind on sparkling blue beaches in total seclusion, with every need attended to.
“They won’t have to lift a finger,” he said.
Cristina Bolling is managing editor of The Ledger: cristina@cltledger.com.
Today’s supporting sponsors are Landon A. Dunn, attorney-at-law in Matthews…
… and T.R. Lawing Realty:
Ledger NFT auction ends — bids total $6
For some reason, The Ledger’s recent auction of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that we announced last week didn’t break the internet. And it didn’t make us wealthy.
Ledger readers, in their wisdom, largely passed on the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to convert their hard-earned cash into cryptocurrency and purchase unique avatars of editors Tony Mecia and Cristina Bolling, the Ledger logo on a colorful background and a vintage and autographed first-edition newsletter from February 2019.
Three of the four did receive bids. The logo went for 0.001 ethereum ($3.03), the Tony avatar went for 0.0004 ethereum ($1.15), and the signed newsletter went for 0.0007 ethereum ($2.12). Cristina’s avatar, we’re sorry to say, didn’t receive a bid, but The Ledger in a sign of support and goodwill will add the minimum bid ($1) to her February paycheck.
A reader sent us an article from the New York Times, which undertook a similar exercise last year. Their NFT attracted a bid of $560,000.
Out of gas: We are sorry to disappoint the winning bidders — OpenSea users D2483B, UptownEvo and Metapix3ls — but we discovered that when we went to accept their bids that The Ledger was to be charged “gas” fees of $47 per item to transfer them. Rookie mistake on our part. Recall that we already spent $175 to “mint” the items, and paying another $150 or so to earn $6 strikes us as an unwise financial move. We declined the offers, as is allowed under OpenSea’s terms of service on auctions.
Our piece last week drew a lot of good reader comments:
“Great job explaining NFTs. This was one of the clearest articles I have ever seen written. Hopefully it will be a great 101 for those that want to sound intelligent when someone says ‘What do you think about NFTs?’”
“I keep trying to put a bid on one of the NFTs, but it’s charging me $10 just to send ETH to a wallet as a ‘data mining fee’ and then another fee to convert ETH to WETH. Crypto platforms are garbage! Or I just don’t know what I am doing.”
“Thank you for one of the best explanations of NFTs I’ve seen.”
“NFTs are not new. VCs just found a way to market them again and sell to people who aren’t technically inclined enough to know they are a scam. It’s really sad, honestly. The question people need to ask themselves is: Are you someone who likes to come up with new ways to get someone else to pay thousands of dollars for a .jpg of a monkey that anyone can download for free?”
“You been working out?”
“That Tony has been doing some curls!”
“You [Tony] sort of look like a buff Jason Bateman.”
“NFT Tony Mecia is jacked”
“Cristina, your avatar in the Ledger today doesn’t capture your true beauty!”
We’re finished dabbling in NFTs for now. But if this metaverse thing ever really does take off, be sure to stop by the virtual Ledger office tower in virtual South End. You’ll see these virtual keepsakes hanging in the virtual lobby. —TM
Drumroll, please … announcing the judges for the 2022 Charlotte Ledger 40 Over 40 Awards … and the deadline for nominations is midnight tonight!
We’re thrilled to have an incredible slate of judges for this year’s Charlotte Ledger 40 Over 40 Awards, which honor the unsung heroes in our community who are using their wisdom and years of experience on this earth to make Charlotte a better place.
Our 15 judges may be relative whippersnappers (they fall between the ages of 23 and 39), but you’ll see by reading their biographies that they bring a depth of knowledge and backgrounds to the task of choosing this year’s winners.
We invite you to get to know them!
Nominations end today! Today is last call for 40 Over 40 nominations, so if you haven’t nominated someone yet, do so right this very minute. Nominating is fun, easy and free, and it only takes a couple of minutes. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. tonight.
Nominating someone for 40 Over 40 is a great way to show your appreciation and to tell the world about someone doing great things in our community. Think about who your personal heroes are in Charlotte, whether they’re teachers, healthcare workers, community volunteers, helpful neighbors or business mentors.
Does this winter seem colder, or warmer, than usual?
We’ve had some warmish days, sure, in the last couple months, but if you’re like us, recent blustery weekends and last month’s repeated snow drama have made it feel like this winter has been colder than last.
Not so, says WCNC meteorologist Brad Panovich. In an interesting thread on Twitter, Panovich ran the numbers for this year’s meteorological winter which started Dec.1 and found that Charlotte is on pace for the 10th warmest winter on record. And it’s been 4.4 degrees warmer than last winter, he wrote.
Perhaps this winter’s snowstorms, if you can call them that, stand out in our brains a little more because it had been so long since we’d had much snow and ice in Charlotte.
January was the 24th-snowiest January on record in Charlotte with 4.3 inches of snowfall. Snow and ice accumulated during three separate weather events on Jan. 16, 21 and 29.
“Shows how recency bias and getting snow can make us perceive things differently,” Panovich wrote on Twitter.
This week will start out cool, with highs today in the 40s, before warming up into the 50s on Tuesday. — CB
Correction: An article in Friday’s newsletter about neighbors angry over planned apartments near Providence High School mischaracterized the role of Keith MacVean of Moore & Van Allen. He is a land use consultant. Apologies.
In brief:
Covid tests back at libraries: The Mecklenburg County Health Department will resume handing out free at-home Covid tests at eight Charlotte Mecklenburg Library locations today. No identification, prescription or insurance is required and there is a maximum of four tests per household. Free at-home tests are also available at the county health department’s southeast Charlotte location on Billingsley Road. (WFAE)
Amber Alert: Police put out an Amber Alert Sunday for 1-year-old Lilliana Josephine Lemmond who went missing from Mint Hill, and she was later found safe, according to Mint Hill Police. Police said Sunday they are still searching for the child’s father, 39-year-old Jeremy Scott Lemmond, her alleged abductor. (WSOC)
Fertility benefits: Both locally and nationally, more companies are offering their workers fertility support benefits like egg freezing and in-vitro fertilization. In 2020, 11% of U.S. employers with 500 employees or more covered egg freezing, up from 5% in 2015, according to a recent report. (Axios Charlotte)
Unbearable marketing campaign: Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Build-A-Bear Workshop released “The Bear Cave” line of teddy bears for “after dark,” which require online shoppers to attest to being 18+ to browse. Charlotte’s only Build-A-Bear Workshop is in Pineville’s Carolina Place Mall. (Build-A-Bear Workshop)
Taking stock
Unless you are a day trader, checking your stocks daily is unhealthy. So how about weekly? How local stocks of note fared last week (through Friday’s close), and year to date:
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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire, CXN Advisory; Contributing photographer/videographer: Kevin Young, The 5 and 2 Project
"We have fun with the whole Prince thing"?!?...It's been only 5 years since this extraordinary artist died from a fentanyl overdose of counterfeit pills. Macabre, insensitive, conspicuous consumption, and just awfully poor taste. Might you consider, Mr. Barnes, taking some of that big money you make from renting that big mansion you own and setting up a fund to help with this drug epidemic? Maybe put it in Prince's name. Now THAT would have an incredible cool factor!