Not so much a man cave but a man aircraft hangar. Travis Kelce – the Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end, Taylor Swift’s other half – is the latest celebrity to have adopted the all-encompassing subterranean “Iceberg House” – a must-have accoutrement for his sprawling 17,000-square-foot home in the Kansas City suburbs.
Decked-out, amenity-filled basements have quickly become essential for luxury McMansionsaccording to architects, real estate agents and designers. Kelce’s soon-to-be iceberg house features a golf simulator, a top-of-the-line gym, a lounge and more. The football star’s recently remodeled $6 million home was built in 1996 by Kansas City-based architect Wolfgang Trost. The lower level is a recent addition. Trost, who couldn’t speak specifically about Kelce’s home due to an NDA, told Mansion Global:
“There is no limit to what you can do. Some projects I’ve worked on have multiple levels below ground.”
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While most man caves might feature a multi-gym, cardio equipment, TV lounge, bar and spare bedroom, the sky’s the limit for high-net-worth owners like Kelce. Trost says additional amenities include full-scale racquet and basketball courts, whiskey rooms, bars, wine cellars, doomsday bunkers, movie theaters with stadium seating and swimming pools. Additional luxury add-ons include recording studios, saunas, massage rooms, cold plunge pools and steam showers.
The thirst for home improvement has meant tunneling down well below the standard basement level to include as many additional luxury features as the homeowner can imagine.
“I work on 12 to 15 residential projects a year and now all of these have lavish subterranean levels. A decade ago, only 20% of my clients wanted them,” Ignacio Rodriguez, the founder of IR Architects, said.
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Not everyone welcomes the construction of luxury subterranean palaces – especially the owners of neighboring homes. Removing trees and digging so far down can cause issues of permeability, erosion and the possibility of collapsing foundations, especially in wet climates where the soil can become heavy and waterlogged. Still, the opportunity to keep opulent living spaces away from the public eye is an obvious draw for privacy-conscious homeowners.
