re: Mansion in Chattanooga, TN that apparently cost $40M to build in '07 now listed for $16M

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California buyer scraps plans for $17 million purchase of Chattanooga mansion
Sale of Chickamauga Lake home would have been a record-breaking deal, but now legal fight is under way
February 6, 2023
by Dave Flessner

The biggest home sale ever in Chattanooga was scheduled to close Tuesday when a California millionaire agreed to buy a 23,000-square-foot mansion on Chickamauga Lake for $17 million, or nearly twice as much as any previous residential sale in Hamilton County.

But after depositing $1 million into an escrow account for the lakefront home in December, Christopher R. Redlich of San Clemente, California, has decided to terminate his purchase agreement.

Bernice Sale, the current owner of the house at 6500 Solitude Drive in Harrison, moved out of the house in preparation for the sale and is now suing Redlich and his agents to claim the deposit and other damages and injunctive relief from the canceled sale.

Sale, the chairman of the Dayton, Tennessee-based Simply Bank, built the six-bedroom, four-level mansion with her late husband David nearly two decades ago on two acres the couple originally bought in 1996, according to Hamilton County property records. The house was listed for sale most of last year with a $16.5 million asking price, the highest price ever for a residential listing in Hamilton County.
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Konvalinka also cited deed language that gives TVA the right "to disperse, spread or deposit above or upon the land" materials or air pollutants from nearby power plants.

Such deed restrictions are common on the lakes that TVA has created with its dams and reservoir system over its 89-year history. But such restrictions may have seemed different for Redlich from the oceanfront property he previously bought in San Clemente, California.

In 2021, Redlich purchased a mansion on the Pacific coast in San Clemente for $33.9 million, according to the real estate outlet MansionGobal. The oceanfront home is near Casa Romantica, which was known as Richard Nixon's western White House while he served as president.

The Chattanooga house was priced for only half what Redlich paid for his California mansion, but it is still the highest-valued home in Hamilton County, according to the Hamilton County Assessor's Office.

The Chickamauga lake home was built for Bernice and David Sale, a former owner of the Sale Auto Mall, who died in 2012. Bernice Sale was married to David Sale for 19 years after the death of her first husband, George Calfee, who founded and later sold the Calfee's Favorite Markets convenience store chain.

Among 17 houses currently listed above $1 million in the Chattanooga area, the Sale mansion is by far the highest-priced home, according to the Greater Chattanooga Realtors' multiple listing service.

Last year, two other mansions sold for the highest price ever for a residential sale in Hamilton County but those sales were only half of what Sale is seeking for her house.

Last fall, David and Kim Duplissey sold their 17,772-square-foot house along 26 acres on the Tennessee River at 502 Browns Ferry Road in Tiftonia for $8.7 million -- the highest price paid so far for a home in the Chattanooga area.

Earlier last year, the estate of the late Sharon Mills sold her mansion atop Elder Mountain for $4.9 million.

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