Got a Gilded Age mansion to unload? Try this unorthodox approach

In attempt to drum up interest about a Philadelphia mansion that’s been sitting on the market for years, listing agent Frank Johnson decided to reach out to Amazon.

“I know they are looking for an office site in the East Coast,” said Johnson, a Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach agent, to Mansion Global.

The site Johnson is proposing is known as Lynnewood Hall, a 110-room Gilded Age mansion with 55 bedrooms, an art gallery, pool and an electric power plant. It also comes with a ballroom that can accommodate 1,000 people — basically all the essentials for a company campus.

If Amazon is interested, the price tag is currently at $16.5 million, though restoration costs are estimated to start at $10 million. It’s a bargain compared to the mansion’s initial listing price of $20 million in 2014, however time is definitely on the tech company’s side since over the last four months the price dropped by $1 million.

If Amazon, or any of the other corporations Johnson has reached out to, do materialize for a showing, the agent is ready to list of the potential uses for the vacant mansion.

“It can be a high-end restaurant, a boutique hotel, an art museum, or a magnificent private estate,” he said to Mansion Global. It just needs to get sold.

[Mansion Global] — E.K. Hudson