McMansions: Hold the golden arches. (That house is big enough already.)

A few things caught my eye over the last week or so. One was the story that John Henry, one of the Red Sox' owners, had just purchased a $16 million mansion from - of all things - Frank McCourt, a Boston boy made good who owns the L.A. Dodgers. (And how delicious is it that this fellow has the same name as the writer Frank McCourt, who grew up in abysmal poverty in the slums of Limerick.)

In any case, the world of mega houses is a mighty small world if only those who own baseball teams - or thereabouts - can sell to each other.

The buzz is that, even though the McCourts had just sunk millions into fixing up the house - presumably going a bit beyond the slap-a-coat-of-paint, reface the cabinets, and waft in the smell of apple pie changes that everyone does when they go to sell - the house is just not right. Henry wants to tear it down and start over. There's some talk that the Town of Brookline, where this $16M tar-paper rathole is situated, is resisting because the house has some historic significance.

It sure seems like a shame that, for a measly $16 mil you can't find anything decent in Brookline, but it's his money and his house. I might think that it's wasteful and profligate to spend money like that, but it's not as if I haven't had a few profligate moments of my own. Just nothing of this order of magnitudes.

But the John Henry-Frank McCourt saga is about real mansions.

Most of the conversation these days is around McMansions, those out-sized houses that spring up on a lot after someone decides they just can't live in a 2,500 square foot house built in 1922. What they really need is a 5,000 square foot house with his and her walk-in closets, a cathedral ceiling, and a Media Room.

McMansions have been sprouting up in the near-suburbs of Boston for years now. The towns were it occurs are middle and upper-middle class, have small-ish lots, and very good public schools. Oh, and they were pretty much built out 50 years ago. There's not a ton of room to slap up new subdivisions with the big old McMansions that people crave these days.

A few years ago, my cousin Barbara and her husband, empty nesters, decided to sell their house in Lexington, Massachusetts. (One of the near-suburbs I just described.) They were told that their house - a perfectly nice 1920's house on a double lot - would go for a teardown. They knew it was coming, as they'd watched a few McMansions pop up in their neighborhood. After one Christmas dinner at Barbara and Dick's, a bunch of us took a walk around the corner, and did a "walkthrough" of a partially framed up McM that was going up.

Barbara's house could have used a bit of work - and a second bathroom - but teardown seemed a bit harsh to all of us. Here was a perfectly nice, well-made, comfortable home - good enough for Barbara and Dick to raise their kids in - that was worth more as a teardown than a sell-as-is.

A McMansion now occupies the former site of Chez Kilroy. A couple of times, when I've been in the neighborhood, I've driven past. The new house is perfectly nice, in an ostentatious, out of synch with the rest of the neighborhood sort of way. And I'm sure that, as more of the other empty-nesters in the hood prepare to sell, there'll be more than a few additional jumbos going up there.

The latest noise isn't coming out of Lexington. It's coming out of Wellesley - a ritzier suburb than Lexington, but another near 'burb with great schools.

As reported by Erica Noonan in The Boston Globe, the squall brewing in Wellesley is over

...a 5,900-square-foot, three-story Colonial wedged into little more than a quarter-acre, a structure that dwarfs the New England sampler of quaint Capes and Victorians nestled in the woodsy neighborhood around it.

My, my, my. 5,900 square feet. You can do a whole lot of livin' in that house, I'll bet. Like a lot of people I know, I could use an additional 200 square feet. I just wouldn't know what to do with this additional 4,700 square feet on our current "footprint" of 1,200, other than fill it up over time with crap I don't need.

This particular McMansion has apparently set the Town of Wellesley off, and their Planning Board is considering a fatwa on out-of-scale construction projects. While they're at it, they're also talking about a resident review board which would

....to make judgments about a proposed house: Would it block a neighbor's sunlight? Would its droning air conditioning sit too close to the property lines? Would the driveway cause glaring headlights to shine in nearby windows?

For the record, the 5,900 square foot spec house has been on the market for a year-and-a-half at $2 million with no takers. (Frankly, I'm surprised that a house that large in Wellesley would go for so little. It must be that sub-standard neighborhood, with its dreary, squinchy little Capes and Victorians, that's dragging things down.)

Wellesley, by all markers - education, wealth, income - is an above average town. It's also above average when it comes to square footage of new construction. New houses in Wellesley average 4,400 square feet - vs. a U.S. average of 2,500.

I can sympathize with the neighbors who don't want these McMansions casting giant shadows on their property. It certainly is a case of their goes the neighborhood you bought into, know and love. But it seems as if, once one or two of these McMansions appear, there will be, over time, a domino effect. You tell me that people are going to settle for $100,00 less on a let-it-stand than they would for a tear-it-down. (Hah.)

The new rules are not an outright ban, the board says, and don't prevent tear-downs.

"This is not the ranch house preservation act," said board member Donald McCauley.

But the review board - volunteers appointed by the town Planning Board - would be empowered to make subjective judgments. Neighbors of the proposed mansions would be encouraged to attend hearings and chime in.

"People will need to start thinking differently about their projects," said Planning Board member Rose Mary Donahue. "The hope is that we'll be seeing better projects because people are thinking about them more."

Good luck! (And great one-liner, Don, about the 'ranch house preservation act.' Those tacky little ranch houses have, by the way, been going for $800K. Location. Location. Location.)

Giving a bit of equal time to the developers, one of them had this to say:

"We've been painted as an enemy when we care very much about the community," he said. "We are building the homes that people ask us to build."

Ah, there's the real story. "We are building the homes that people ask us to build."

Wouldn't you think that, in this day and age, people might be asking to build houses that are going to be a bit less demanding of heat and air conditioning than a 5,900 square foot McMansion? Wouldn't you think?