SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A new house Mitt Romney is building in Utah is not only spacious and luxurious, but also a little mysterious.
The home’s study has a bookcase on the far wall that swivels open and leads into a hidden room, according to architecture plans obtained by The Salt Lake Tribune (http://bit.ly/1a0wGL9 ). The drawings say the room is for office storage, and show it is 11-feet long with cabinets.
It’s not the first time plans for a Romney home include attention-grabbing features. Drawings for renovation on a waterfront house in Lo Jolla, Calif., include a split-level garage with an elevator.
The Tribune reports the 5,900-square-foot house in the Salt Lake City suburb of Holladay will be the fifth home for the former Republican presidential candidate. He recently bought an 8,700-square-foot home that has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms in the Utah mountain resort town of Park City. He also has homes in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
The planning documents for the new Utah house show it listed as a home for Romney’s wife, Ann Romney. The home sits on an acre of land next to a home being built by their son, Josh Romney, the Tribune reports.
The home is called a “new farmhouse” in drawings approved by city officials. The house will have vertical wood siding, wood shutters on the windows and large sliding barn doors. The property will have several lawns, a fountain, terraces, a gazebo and a spa.
The Tribune obtained the plans through an open records request.
Romney now will have two homes in Utah, where he has family ties going back several generations and where he came in 1999 to help save the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from a bribery scandal.
“Looks like to me,” said Taylor Oldroyd, chief executive of the Utah County Association of Realtors, “that Mitt Romney realizes that Utah is the place to be, and wants to be there.”
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
