KEVIN Agent Spotlight ZELLMER

BY MELISSA KANDEL

It started with a referral.

Kevin Zellmer, owner and managing broker at Realty ONE Group Enterprise in Bothell/ Eastside and Lake Chelan, Washington, connected with a client who, as it turned out, had no idea just how perfectly suited for the job he’d be.

She was a professional chef in need of a commercial lease for her fast-expanding cooking empire. He was a real estate agent with a long career sparkling in hospitality highlights.

“I worked for Embassy Suites, Hilton, Starwood, Hotel Monaco in Seattle, private golf clubs, five-star hotels, top restaurants,” Zellmer says, rattling off famous hotel names like the ingredients to a prized recipe. “The client who referred me only knew I liked food and beverage, and this new client was a professional chef. She wanted space to open a retail shop and HGTV-style cooking school.”

So that’s how the story started – with a simple referral – and while it would end with a 7,000-square-foot Tudor Castle in Kent, Washington, (just outside of Seattle) it’s the middle part where the real (estate) mystery unfolds.

Zellmer arranged to meet with his new client, Christina Arokiasamy, a Malaysian-born award-winning cookbook author, former chef of various Four Seasons Resorts throughout Southeast Asia, and the first-ever Food Ambassador to the United States.

“I have an idea,” he told her, after learning the details of her particular culinary query, which also included the need for enough room to house a cook-your-meals-with-the-chef B&B. “We could look for a commercial space, but do you really want to have that downtown lease? Pay for the infrastructure and equipment? And can we even guarantee there’ll be enough space for everything you want to do?”

The answers were unknowable but Zellmer had already decided to ask a different kind of question. “What if we go in another direction?” He said to Arokiasamy. “What if instead of commercial space, we look for a very large home with a daylight basement, separate entrances, big enough to live your life in one area and operate your business in another? It would have to be a special kind of house to work for you but I’m confident we can find it.”

She agreed. No harm in trying.

Then Zellmer’s search began. He weeded through the available Greater Seattle inventory: 4,500+ square feet. (Or more.) A fixer upper. (Absolutely.) Three stories. (At least!) Extra bedrooms. (To convert into that B&B.) A daylight basement. (Additional space.) A large yard with plenty of land. (For outdoor tented food soirées, naturally.)

After an exhaustive online hunt, Zellmer thought he’d found The One, a historic Tudor in Kent, Washington, about 20 miles south of Seattle. The property sat on almost an acre of land, with 4,650 square feet of living space plus a 2,090-squarefoot partially finished basement. It had seven bedrooms and four bathrooms, with stained glass windows and a soaring 20-foot ceiling in the family room. By all accounts, it could be Chef Arokiasamy’s massive cooking headquarters. If only his client saw the vision, too.

“I’ve got it,” he told Chef Arokiasamy and her husband, excitedly sending the listing their way.

“Kevin …” she said, and a 7,000-square-foot-sized pause followed.

“Yes?” He asked. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s awful.”

Zellmer wasn’t surprised; he practically knew she’d say that. “Exactly! Let’s take a tour!”

Off they went to Kent – the agent, his culinary client and her husband – and stepped inside the Tudor as rapidfire conversation followed the gargantuan property’s every twist and turn.

“The house is terrible ...”

“I know!”

“It is big …”

“Very big. And you could knock down the walls …”

“We could put the B&B upstairs here …”

“Give it a new exterior …

“Add space over the garage …”

“Have a separate entrance for students and a basement that leads to the large grounds …”

Slowly, as Zellmer described the possible renovations, and Chef Arokisamay agreed, the vision came to life. He could see it. His clients could see it, too.

Sold.

Over the next two years, the house underwent a massive renovation. “They basically decided to tear everything out and completely gut the home,” says Zellmer. “They created a gorgeous commercial kitchen and pantry that’s so thoughtfully laid out, you could have Food Network come in and film Emeril cooking there any day. The kitchen has two dishwashers, an eight-burner stove, a mini oven, and drawers specifically built for knives, bowls … it’s really a masterpiece.”

Among the many, many changes made to the home, Chef Arokisamy and her husband added Brazilian walnut hardwood floors, Bedrosian Italian floor in the primary bathroom, Bisazza luxury Italian wall tiles, Holly Hunt English woven wallpaper, handmade Ambiente European Tile in the kitchen, a Chihuly hand blown glass pendant lamp over the kitchen island, a luxury Cambria Bently kitchen island with a waterfall edge, and William Morris and Sanderson English wallpaper in the living room.

Then, to complete the breathtaking transformation, Chef Arokiasamy traveled to Bali and bought a dining table, light fixtures, wood furniture and had it loaded up into shipping containers and sent back to her house in Kent. In the end, about three quarters of the furniture in the home arrived on a 40-foot shipping container straight from Bali. The result was a Balinese resort-style relaxed elegance that emanated from every corner of the interior spaces.

When Chef Arokisamy called and said, “Kevin the home is done, come see it and let’s eat!!” He didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation.

“When I saw the finished house, it was more magnificent than we first envisioned!” he says.

“After seeing all that work completed, I realized more than just a magnificent showcase home, it was a Balinese cooking castle.”

Zellmer says the property is not only more functional but also exponentially more valuable. “They bought the home for under $600,000 and with the extensive changes they made, it’s worth well over $2+ million today,” he explains.

And to think, everything began with a referral.

“From that first meeting, sensing her passion, I knew right away that a cold storefront would never come close to capturing what she really needed for her business,” Zellmer explains. “I could have easily said, ‘OK, let’s go with a commercial space,’ but my experience told me that just wasn’t the right way to go.”

Zellmer still visits his client and even took her popular cooking class, but he says the real moral of this culinary fairy tale isn’t about the castle they ultimately constructed or how perfect it is for her courses, shop, events and B&B. “This is a story about possibilities,” he says. “It just goes to show, with a little imagination, anything is possible.”