The $15 Million ‘Safest Home in America’ Comes With a 30-Car Garage Behind a Waterfall
No, the current owner is not Bruce Wayne.
In times like these, you may find yourself wishing for a place to get away from it all—permanently, if need be. Luckily, we know just the spot: a $15 million "modern fortress" complete with eight bedrooms, a private theater, anti-ballistic doors, a 14,000 square foot, self-sustaining bunker, and a 30-car garage whose entrance is hidden behind a waterfall. Welcome to the Rice House, soon to be one of the safest homes in the world and a suitable stand-in for Wayne Manor.
Spread out over a positively palatial 36,000 square feet and situated on an intensely private 3.5 acre lot outside Atlanta, Georgia, the Rice House is an as-yet unfinished ode to the paranoia of the über-rich. The residence itself contains eight bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, a bowling alley, private screening room, indoor shooting range, an art museum, "command center," and a pair of commercial elevators for good measure.
But like with any old episode of MTV's Cribs, we're just here for the garage—in this case, a 5,000 square foot, 30-space "car vault" with a secret entrance concealed by a waterfall and moat. The renderings show it filled with a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, a Ferrari Enzo, a first-generation Ford GT, and other treasures. The owner requested the construction team figure out a way to build it without interior support columns, so as not to spoil any of the views from inside. Hopefully, its eventual occupants live up to those fever-dream designs.
And yes, if things get a little hairy topside and those bulletproof bedroom doors just won't cut it anymore, you can always retreat to your massive underground Batcave—sorry, bunker—with off-the-grid wells and geothermal power for an extended stay down below. The whole thing has been built to "live to die another day" standards by a well-known security expert, whatever that means, and the house is supposedly designed to stand for the next 1,000 years.
By now you're probably wondering: Who the hell built this thing? According to Bloomberg, an unnamed entrepreneur commissioned the house as both a fun vanity project (He reportedly told the broker, "If anyone wants to get me, they can find me at Chick-fil-A,") and as a family compound to leave to his son. Unfortunately, he apparently forgot to ask his son first and opted to dump the project on another willing mega-millionaire once he realized the boy wasn't interested in living in something that could pass as a presidential compound.
His loss can be your gain. Despite pouring more than $30 million into the "best of everything" project, he's letting it go for a paltry $14.7 million—though the broker told Bloomberg it will likely take another few million to finish the property. Don't think of it as an incomplete house. As the listing says, it "purposefully awaits" your final touches.