Yes, there really WAS a huge abandoned mansion at the top of Copper Road at the base of Frenchman Mountain for almost a decade. Yes there really WAS a mystery there, a mystery that is still going on today.
This blog will ask the questions, and deliver answers as we know them. Where we don't know the answers, we will leave it to you, our readers and amateur as well as professional investigators, to decide.
Q: What about the rumors of it being an abandoned orphanage? Haunted? There was some sort of hatch in the basement that went to hidden tunnels? An underground military base under Frenchman Mountain? That a kid had died in a mining tunnel under there and it was sealed up? What about the strange creepy booms heard underneath it?
A: It was never an orphanage, nor did Las Vegas ever have one. It was never haunted except by various squatters who, I am sure, faked being ghosts on numerous occasions to scare kids and taggers away. Possibly gangs faked being ghosts too, but the place never was a real gang hangout. The place was eerily beautiful at night, with the best views at the time of the Vegas strip, which is why it lured so many teens up there.
There WAS a "secret room", right off the family room, behind a dining room wall, hidden behind a built in bookcase on hinges that swung outward.
The kids tagged it “The Nothing Room”. You can see the torn off inner door to the right.
And in the basement handball court, just underneath the “secret room” and the stairway that led downward, WAS a metal hatch.
The hatch covered a hole to cover the machinery planned for an elevator. The secret room was originally designed as an elevator hatch, to go from the top story, down to the lower story entry, all the way down three stories to the basement handball court. There was never going to be a stairway downward. Dias never built it the way it was designed. Beccause he couldn't afford the planned elevator, the shaft had to become the “secret room”. The machinery hole was covered by a hatch, and he built a stairway down in a place it was never planned for, with no room to do it properly to code, so that he couldn't even put full height doors into the handball court at the bottom. The handball court was never finished either, nothing but a dirt floor. It was a playroom for his kids, the door into it ended up being 4' tall!
Most tragically, a teen DID die in a Frenchman Mountain tunnel... rather, he disappeared and was never found. The tunnel was sealed up. The entrance is nowhere near 7275 Copper.
The subsonic creepy booms? Clark County water district digging the third access tunnel into the bottom of Lake Mead from their plant just south of Frenchman. For several years. Blasting.
As far as we know there is NO underground military base under Frenchman Mountain.
Q: When was it built? Who built it?
A: County records show it was homesteaded in 2001, by contractor Michael Anthony Dias, and former chairman of the Sunrise Manor Town Advisory Board. Then deeded to Stratus Consturction Company in 2001 who probably started the build.
Q: Who was the architect? Was it really designed for Arnold Schwarzeneggar?
A: The architect was M. Dewey Jones. A modern visionary who designed it far more modern and Frank Lloyd Wright influenced than it was eventually built in an all bad quasi-Tuscan stucco style. As far as we know, yes, it was originally designed for Arnold Schwarzengger, his two children, and Maria Shriver. And their maid, there was a very convenient maid's house next to where the pool was going.
Arnold even had a unique sunken bar in the living room designed so he, at his 6' 4" height, could tend bar at parties and not block the guests view of the Vegas skyline. Everything you see boarded up and black here was wide open glass.
As it was designed, it was quite an amazing place. Right off the master, was Arnold's personal gym area with its own balcony deck and views of the strip, with entrances to his master closet and the "his" side of the master bath.
Maria Shriver had a master closet just off her side of the master bath that was four times the size of Arnold's and almost two stories tall. She had her own entrance to her own side of the master bath so she didn't have to go through Arnold's gym area. Her master closet also had its own adjacent laundry.
The master bath had a huge sunken jacuzzi tub with a fireplace with windows all around and above looking to the empty desert BLM land to the south, and enormous his and hers showers on each side of the master bath. The hers' shower was twice the size of the his shower. The master had a stairway that went up to a viewing cupola with a 360° view of the entire valley from the mountain just feet away to Mt. Charleston.
In the middle of the living room was a metal stand that originally held an enormous massive boulder excavated from the site. It was the first thing you saw when you entered the massive entry, beyond what had been planned to be a massive aquarium divider but instead ended up being a small waterfall feature. Many things in the original plans had to be retrofitted for the vastly smaller build budget.
The kitchen was designed for lavish catered parties, with two sets of bifold double doors (in and out) for servants to bring dinner out to the family and to guests in the dining room. No open plan for this house with a full staff including a chauffeur to bring the cars up to the porte cocheré from the 16 car garage that had been planned for below and never built.
Both the two childrens' bedrooms had their own master baths and walk in closets with separate tubs and showers. The master suite alone was well over 3000 square feet. Between the two children's bedrooms was a private play yard for the kids open to the sky.
(We could have posted far more photos but the place was such a wreck it's hard to see what was what.)
A: No, he pulled out of the deal before it was finished. We don't know if he ever even visited the property.
Q: Why did he pull out?
A: We don't know for sure. Current owners claim on social media that the original earthquake fault records were faulty, the faults were mismapped, and the entire site is unbuildable. Whether this was a factor and Schwarzeneggar merely did the due diligence to find this all out way back when, we don't know.
Q: How was Dias able to build it in the first place? How did the fault lines get mis-mapped and when? And why?
A: We don't know. We do know Dias' engineer for the place had several violations and complaints and was disciplined in 1994 and had his license suspended in 1995.
Q: Was it ever finished? Did anyone ever live there?
A: The house was finished, completely, not even close to the original plans and specifications, by Dias with what he could borrow after Schwarzenegger pulled out. He lived there, with his family, and dog, until a divorce. We do not know how complete the house was at this point, as there was a mysterious fire about the time of the divorce that caused $200,000 of damage, and we did not discover nor examine the house itself until it was on the market in 2008. One MLS photo still survives of the house at this point, and that is the photo at the top of this blog. The photographer has since lost all the photos he took, inside and out, in a mysterious unrecoverable hard drive crash.
Mysteriously, we were also told by the architect that he strangely had all the plans for the place stolen out of his office.
After the divorce, the place was strangely left wide open for more than a decade to the elements, vandals, and squatters. There was a handy attic hatch off the master bedroom stairway to the cupola above the master where squatters could hide in the roof when anyone came visiting. Not to mention at least two generations of Vegas taggers who decorated the place quite artistically with odd tags for kids to write like "Tax this" and "Fuck you Bitch" written, strangely, on the HERS vanity side of the master bath.
It's a safe bet more than one potential child was created in that place, under the stars, the Vegas skyline spread out below, dreaming of one day having a place like this to themselves, only reborn.
By the time vandals were finished in 2010, the place was virtually worthless. Still renoable, but virtually worthless given the market crash and the enitre Sunrise Manor neighborhood becoming Vegas Foreclosure Capital East.
Q: So why didn't anyone ever fix it up and sell it? Was it ever listed?
A: Chain of ownership is available on county recorder records, and is very mysterious. Dias sold it to a consortium of MANY investors, who then sold it to one Cameron Udy, who went to prison with his father for a shill buying house scam that was quite public in the early 2000's. What groups were doing were shill buying various properties and trading themselves amongst themselves or even their unaware clients to drive up housing prices. No one ever actually lived in these properties or ever fully paid off the bank loans, which were all over Las Vegas, and became magnets for squatters and deteriorated formely very nice neighborhoods. Still, vandalized, squatted in, ruined, these properties mysteriously kept being sold and resold, each time for a higher and higher price. Sometimes, even ridiculously and suspiciously higher prices. Which is why the US government came in with Operation Stolen Dreams. Udy with his father R. Dean Udy, got 1-15 years by using his position of trust as a Mormon Elder to ruin neighborhoods by simultaneously raising prices to where no one but shill bidding scammers could afford them, and then ruining the neighborhoods for everyone else when squatters took them over.
Q: Who got the place after Udy?
A: NOW it gets interesting. A Las Vegas Mormon lawyer by the name of Michael C. Van of the lawfirm (THEN Schumway Van, & Hansen) somehow acquired the property from convicted shill buyer Udy. Not bought; "acquired". Schumway Van are the lawyers for a Mormon investment group out of Utah and Las Vegas called Private Capital Group. They, as 7275 Copper Road LLC., became the owners of the property after Udy. It was sold back and forth to an amazing and mysterious group of various people and entities that strangely now on county records have all been "corrected" to Michael C. Van. Each for a higher and more suspicious price given the increasing deterioration of the property. We actually called one of these men to let him know that he was about to lose "his" property to the county for unpaid back taxes in an auction. Strangely enough, right after that call, Michael C. Van/PCG paid the taxes on the property in the nick of time.
Q: That's strange. Was the capital group trying to LOSE it to the county and whoever bid on it on purpose? Did they know it was unbuildable?
A: We don't know. What we do know is that shortly after, PCG started a renovation on the property, which was somehow stopped DEAD. The contractor for that renovation was Mike Shomer. The place was painted dark brown, two new fixtures were added on the very front, concrete blocks for a new wall were delivered. However, that reno was stopped cold.
Q: Could the county have shut them down because of the earthquake fault problem?
A: It's possible. If this is the case, they would have to divulge that to each successive buyer in the line of ownership OR be subject to an enormous fraud lawsuit. From the subsequent buyers, IF they were actual REAL buyers, who actually WANTED to do something with the property, as opposed to flipping it for a higher and higher price to other straw buyers in a criminal group.
Q: Who got the place after that? After the renovation was shut down?
A: The place was acquired by Troy Stallings and Jane Shorma, who own the house just below that they were renting out for years as "Vegas Views". Stallings is a Sioux Falls South Dakota developer (Creative Buildings Corporation) with property in the Cayman Islands, that spends time in Vegas there with his family. They told us their intention was to buy it to tear it down, they “wanted it gone” because it was cutting into their rental cashflow. Strangely enough, they tried to sell the place many times, on and off the market, for prices way above any other property in the entire area. Oddly enough, ALL these prior listings, plus their prices, have been scraped off Zillow.
Q: Did they know that the place was unbuildable?
A: We don't know. It would make sense, or otherwise why wouldn't they have renovated a far larger far superior house with such an incredible history. That would have brought them MUCH more rental income and future sales potential income than the small house they bought for 1.1 million at the peak of the market in 2008 and renovated that sits just below. And that they are trying to auction as of April 2019 via Sotheby's for an opening bid (“NO reserve!”) of 4.5 million. How convenient for them that all the prior listings and prices have been scrubbed off Zillow. Perhaps a hard drive crash.
What is also highly convenient is that Zillow has refused to show 7275 Copper as anything but vacant land (unbuildable). Since the Stallings razed it to the ground, Zillow has operated as if there was a FULL house there, with old listing information and a Zestimate that always reflected a house in perfect condition despite being notified several times over MANY years in writing that the house was derelict, and eventually had been razed to the ground as clearly shown in their google maps overhead view.
There is a 2.51 acre lot just a wee bit north of there that has a zillow comp on it of $49k. The Copper empty lot is just shy of 5 acres. I'd give the address but things on Zillow in that neighborhood tend to be a bit suspect and change in the favor of certain sellers and never ever change in the favor of certain buyers.
No, strangely enough, Zillow still lists a Zestimate for this empty unubuildable (as claimed by the current owners) lot at 2.45 MILLION. Too bad that $49k 2.51 acre lot isn't just a bit further south.
That must work out well for the Stallings in the Zestimate on their “Vegas Views”.
However, that cannot possibly be good for Zillow's reputation as a plausible impartial source of accurate information in real estate. For buyers. Which I think are half their market.
Q: So who owns it now? How much did it sell for?
A: It's a very sad story. The current owners are wonderful people who, on social media, were thrilled about finally being able to build their dream home. Until they discovered the fault lines had been mismapped. A retired account from the San Francisco area and his wife.
However, prior, the Stallings bought it from PCG group for $425,000 (which somehow got "revised" up on Zillow as $500,000.) After it had been most recently listed for $750,000.
Q: Wow, that was a deal. Did they know it was unbuildable?
A: We don't know. All we know is they bought it to raze it.
Q: How much did the current owners pay? Why is it a sad story? They must have gotten it even cheaper, a better deal, right, I mean it was $750,000 with a house still on it, then bought for $425,000 as a teardown, what awesome deal did the current owners get on it?
A: 1.625 million. They bought it from the Stallings, for 1.625 MILLION.
$1,626,000.00
WITHOUT the house.
Q: Omigod, did THEY know it was unbuildable?
A: We don't know. We do know they hired Blue Heron, one of the TOP modern architecture/contractor/design firms in Las Vegas, which STARTED a build up there, then for whatever reason was again, STOPPED DEAD. For the past several years. Dead. Nothing.
Q: Isn't that a HUGE lawsuit?
A: You would think. If they were unaware that the site was unbuildable, sure. If the Stallings represented before and during the sale that it was buildable when it could be proven they knew it was not, sure. Not only could the owners sue the Stallings for the entire purchase price PLUS interest in the interim, they could sue them for the money they were out to have an architect draw up their dream home plans, for Blue Heron to start contruction and all THOSE costs.
But if the Stallings told them it was unbuildable, there could be no recourse to sue, for they knew in advance what they were getting. And buying. For 1.625 MILLION.
Q: Why would they buy it then if they knew it was unbuildable? Why would they start construction on it if they knew they couldn't build?
A: Truly, it is a mystery.
Indeed,
THE REAL Ongoing Mystery of Arnold Schwarzeneggar's Las Vegas Cali Governor's Mansion on Frenchman Mountain
And Michael Dias
And Schumway, Van, & Hansen
And Private Capital Group
And Creative Building Corporation
And Sotheby's Auction House
And the Current Owners
And the TRULY Mysterious Inaccuracy of Zillow
Q: WHO, exactly, are WE? And WHY do you even care about all of this?
A: All will be known, to all, JUST as soon as the mystery is finally and completely solved.
Let's just say that right now, we JUST can't resist a good mystery.
And is this ever one helluva mystery.
To be continued
“When all else fails, DIG”
