With its circular design and steel and stone build, the infamous Grant mansion looks strangely out of place on the shore of Lake Temiskaming in Haileybury, Ont.
The 65,000-square-foot house has been abandoned for almost 20 years, and it’s become something of a local landmark over time.
“It’s one of the few cool things to see around here,” said Cobalt resident John Goerge Postma, who has brought his out-of-town visitor to the edge of the property to take in the view.
“It looks like the house of a James Bond villain.”
While Postma is here to look from afar, other visitors haven’t been as respectful.
Years of vandalism, damage from the elements
Over the years, vandals have destroyed the inside of the mansion with graffiti, feces and trash.
Add to that water damage that has seeped through the ceilings in parts of the house and turned the floors mushy.
“There’s 107 windows in here and they’ve all been busted,” said Chris Fischer, who bought the abandoned property last year in the hope of turning its restoration into a reality TV show called Mansion Impossible.
Some of the windows even have bullet holes in them, suggesting vandals wanted to see if there was any truth to the rumour that forestry millionaire Peter Grant used bulletproof materials when he started building the mansion in the early 2000s.
The smashed windows and omnipresent graffiti don’t scare Fischer, though.
Built for one
“It’s the size that blows me away. It’s a massive waterfront structure, with a metal section on the top that glows as the sun sets…. It’s beautiful,” he said.
Fischer said there are many eccentric features that suggest Grant spared no expense initially.
“It really does amaze me that he brought in so much fake rock when we’re literally sitting on rock,” he said, adding the three heated pools are also a bit of an overkill.
Before running into financial troubles and being forced to abandon the mansion in 2005, Grant envisioned it could be used as a corporate retreat. The top floor features a massive office space, and there’s only one bedroom in the whole house.
Fischer said he can’t share the full vision he has for the renovation, as it would be part of the TV show. He does say, however, that he wants it to be something the community is proud of.
Still courting potential investors
Crews were ready to begin filming last spring, but the producers have yet to find a TV network or a streaming service willing to pick up the show.
Theresa Kowall-Shipp, one of the Mansion Impossible producers, said there’s been lots of interest in the project over the past year.
“It’s a really compelling cross-border story, with family struggles, mysterious graveyards and even murder,” she said.
“But this is not a home-reno type of show with a big reveal at the end,” she said, adding the windows alone could take up the whole first season.
That is what is making it potentially difficult to sell to platforms, according to Kowall-Shipp.
“It’s exciting. It’s different. It’s new. It’s fun. It’s real,” she said. “Anything that’s different makes people excited, but it also makes them nervous because it’s not tried and tested.”