A 6,500-square-foot retreat on 483 acres on the shores of Craig Pond in Orland nearly broke a Maine real estate record last month when it sold for a whopping $8.2 million to a New Hampshire businessman.
The estate, dubbed “Floating Boulder” by the seller, New Brunswick native and former Irving Oil CEO Kenneth Irving, sold on Dec. 9, 2022, for $8.2 million, according to Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty, the agency that facilitated the deal.
The sale was the highest in the agency’s history, and was the second-highest lakefront sale and the eighth-highest overall residential sale in Maine history, according to Irving’s real estate agent, Elizabeth Banwell.
Legacy Properties declined to disclose the name of the buyer, but a search of both the Orland tax records and the Hancock County registry of deeds showed that Penny Candy Cove LLC, a company owned by Kenneth and Tasha Irving, owned six parcels totaling 483 acres around Craig Pond.
On Dec. 9, 2022, a deed was transferred from Penny Candy Cove to George Manning Rountree of Hanover, New Hampshire. Rountree is CEO of White Mountains, an insurance and related financial services holding company based in New Hampshire.
The property was first put up for sale in fall 2021 for a listing price of $10 million, nearly $2 million more than the eventual sale price in December 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Billionaire businessman Mitchell Rales bought the former Seal Harbor estate of David Rockefeller Sr. in January 2018 for $19 million, the highest residential sale in Maine history. Rales later tore down the main house on the property.
Floating Boulder began to take shape in 2005, when Irving purchased the then-empty property, which includes 7,700 feet of lake frontage on Craig Pond, the clean, deep lake that feeds into Craig Brook National Fish Hatchery.
Portland architect Will Winkelman designed the 6,500-square-foot retreat, which includes a three-story cedar shake lodge with a glass roof and an adjacent bunkhouse designed to look like an old-fashioned summer camp. The two main buildings are connected by a huge screened-in porch.
Among the many luxuries added to the grounds by Saco-based landscape architects Richardson & Associates are an outdoor shower built into a cliff, a hammock grotto, a suspension footbridge leading to a swimming rock at the shoreline, a cliffside fire pit only accessible by boat and a hot tub built into large boulders.
The property is isolated from other houses on Craig Pond, and with its 483 acres and more than a mile of lake frontage, it is effectively a private compound. More images of the house and its grounds can be found on the Legacy Properties website.
Irving served as CEO of the multibillion New Brunswick company Irving Oil for 10 years between 2000 and 2010, taking over from his father, Arthur Irving, who is the son of company founder K.C. Irving. He now lives in British Columbia with his family, where he runs an investment firm.