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""I go to Washington – if only to be near
my money,” comedian Bob Hope once
quipped. But forget about taxes pouring
into federal coffers: With cash to fl ash,
members of Washington’s growing
mega-millionaire’s club ($200 million-plus)
like to show their green in sometimes ritzy but
mainly philanthropic ways.
Buy a baseball team? No problem.
Accessorize with megawatt Hollywood
stars Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? Ditto.
Underwrite productions at the Kennedy
Center? Done.
Washington’s wealth – sparked by the
dotcom boom of the ’90s and fueled by the
ever-rising real estate and stock markets – has
“put a lot of money in people’s pockets and
created a new level of wealth in Washington,” |
says developer Ed Asher of the Chevy Chase
Land Company. While ten Washington-area
residents made the latest Forbes 400 list with
fortunes in the billions, wealth is spread far and
wide these days. Fortunes have been built on
the backs of new technology, media, sports, real
estate, government contracts and, of course,
Washington’s original industry: politics.
In just three years, the number of Washington
area families with liquid assets in the millions
(that is, not counting residential property and
401Ks) grew a whopping 60 percent, from
88,000 in 2003 to 140,000 in 2006. Similarly,
in a slightly higher stratosphere, those with $5
million plus in liquid assets grew 53 percent,
from 15,000 to 23,000 families, according to
Phoenix Marketing International.
Where the money goes, charity fl ows and |
luxury inevitably follows.
Across the capital region – particularly
in places such as Chevy Chase, McLean,
Middleburg, Georgetown and along the
Potomac – WWII-era government housing
is being torn down and converted into
McMansions. Washington trails only
California in the percentage of homes
worth more than $1 million (7.67 percent),
with Virginia and Maryland also in the top
ten, according to a recent Businessweek
report. Record-breaking sales – e.g. the
reported $25 million that former banking
honcho Robert Albritton paid for realestate
mogul Herb Miller’s Georgetown
mansion earlier this year – are increasingly
commonplace.
“There was a time when you couldn’t give |
