Historic Sale in Benton County

One of our Benton County real estate operatives tells us a historic Bentonville property is officially off the market — and the mystery owner landed a bargain.

According to a warranty deed filed Nov. 13 at the Benton County Courthouse, Affordable Arkansas Homes LLC bought the property at 2301 S.W. Second St., known as the “The Applegate House,” for $950,000 from Community First Bank of Harrison.

When we featured the property in a November 2011 issue, it had an asking price of $1.39 million. The house sits atop a hill on 16.6 acres, including the three-acre Jackson Lake.

Noted architect E. Fay Jones designed the 9,500-SF home for friends of his, a local pharmacist named Joe Applegate and his wife, Melba. Construction took three years and was finished in 1967. The Applegate House is included in the Arkansas Register of Historic Places.

According to the ARHP website, in a draft for an awards book on the house, Jones described the needs of the Applegates as:

“A fireproof house for a couple in their early forties with no children.  They requested a large garden room with a swimming pool, a recreation room and bar, and a guest suite in addition to the usual living, dining, kitchen and master bedroom requirements. Provision for outdoor living and dining was requested. They plan to do an unusual amount of entertaining.”

Affordable Arkansas Homes, a company registered in Delaware, also bought about 36 acres east of the The Applegate House for $850,000.

The property stretches from Highway 72 south to Eighth Street. It, too, was owned by Community First Bank, but some years ago it belonged to Vernon and Darlene Patton.

It’s the site of what used to host the Ole Applegate Place Arts & Crafts Festival. Patton, who ran the event, moved it to Mulberry Mountain just north of Ozark in 2007.

That’s when developer Jim Brassart entered the ownership picture, planning a monster retail development by the name of Applegate Hills that was to include everything from a hotel, convention center and office development to residential, retail, restaurants, a park and trail system.

The concept was approved by the city, but we’re guessing those plans went up in recession smoke.