CAMAS — What’s your taste? Country classic? Modern minimalism? Tropical sanctuary?
No matter your personal preference in a home, you’ll be able to find it executed to epic proportions at the 2018 NW Natural Parade of Homes, where 10 luxury houses valued at around $2 million apiece are on display next to the Camas Meadows Golf Course.
It’s the 41st year of the annual real estate tradition, and among the most grand in recent memory, said Jim Beriault, a spokesman for the event hosted by the Building Industry Association of Clark County.
“If you really want to see a volume of amazing homes, this is your year,” Beriault said around noon Friday, two hours after the event opened to the public. It’s early yet, but already “it seems well-attended, it seems very busy,” he added.
Outside, attendees in golf carts driven by event staffers zoomed from the gravel parking lot down to the budding neighborhood. They flowed in and out of homes displaying a wide range of architectural styles. Inside, the decor reflected the character of each house, with furniture that ran the gamut from Spartan to opulent.
If You Go
• What: 2018 NW Natural Parade of Homes, presented by DeWils and Home Street Bank.
• Where: The Parklands at Camas Meadows, off Northwest Camas Meadows Drive, Camas.
•When: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays through Sept. 23.
•Tickets: $12 at the gate, $10 ahead of time at ClarkCountyParadeOfHomes.com. Free for children younger than 12.
Tracy Doriot previously spent four years as chairman of the event and this year attended as builder of The Timberline, a 4,000-square-foot, rustic ski lodge-style home featuring three bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms and the pi?ce de r?sistance: a secret passageway behind a bookshelf that reveals itself when you pull on “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Yes, you read that right. This house has a secret passageway.
Doriot is proud to show off the result of two years’ labor, he said, and he’s especially proud to have created exactly the home his customers wanted.
“I love the house. I love it so much,” Doriot said. “And it is everything that they love.”
All of the homes are custom-built and reflect the tastes of the people who will live there after the event, Doriot said. Parade sites are selected years in advance, and anyone who wants to build on a lot within that site agrees to participate in the open house.
The 2018 location was originally selected for last year’s Parade of Homes, but some adverse weather delayed some of the development and the timeline had to be pushed back a year, Doriot said. Once a Parade of Homes neighborhood is selected, things can turn hectic fast, he added — it draws around 10 builders, all trying to navigate the same roads in the same underdeveloped area on the same fair weather days to construct equally extravagant homes by the same deadline.
The result, though, is an array of houses that provides inspiration to current and potential homeowners, and some hefty fantasy fodder to everybody else.
Take The Black Pearl, a sprawling single-story home styled in a pirate trade-route tradition. It includes an accessory dwelling, more than 1,000 square feet of outdoor living space and an echoing 10-car garage.
Owners Donna Roberts and Dan Lewis, who have lived in Camas for nearly 20 years, said they decided to build from the ground up after a years-long search for the perfect existing home turned up fruitless.
“It’s West Indies. We were going for a really light and bright, kind of a Caribbean resort feel,” said Roberts, who works as a real estate agent.
Together, the homes draw diligent note-takers, real estate enthusiasts and simple admirers alike — and from some, a couple of jokes about setting up camp in the supersized master-suite closets.
“It makes me not want to go home,” cracked Gini Dummer, visiting from Oregon City, Ore. and checking out the kitchen in a modern, airy home dubbed Vista on the Green. “It makes me want to move in here.”
