Skaneateles, N.Y. -- High on a hill overlooking Skaneateles farmland is a vacant mansion.



Built in 2005 by Bill and Linda Adams, the five-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath mansion on 24 acres was built as a model home for The Enclave, the first Central New York subdivision where its promoters said all the homes were going to cost $1 million or more.



Now the model mansion at 1819 Cherry Valley Turnpike is a zombie, a name given to abandoned properties that sit vacant, often neglected.

It has a big red square sign with a white "x" on it, a signal to police and firefighters that the building is vacant and unsafe to enter.

In Skaneateles, a town that's home to a quaint village and multi-millon dollar homes lining the lake, the mansion is the only residential building marked with that sign.

"That house has been a nightmare for many years," said Todd Hall, the town's code enforcement officer for 16 years. The first violations for the property stretch back beyond 2014, he said.



Hall has been checking the neglected mansion once a week for years for vandalism and structural problems. He notifies a property restoration company hired by a bank when the home is broken into.



The big red sign hasn't deterred people from sneaking up the long curved driveway. The damage they've done to the 5,762-square-foot house is horrific.



Most of the doors and windows of the mansion and its three-car garage - with 1,202- square-feet of living space above it - are sealed with plywood. Vandals have pulled off plywood covering one French door to get inside the house.



"It has turned into the common party house," Hall said.



The banister and railings for what was once an elegant curved staircase in the front foyer are gone. Obscene graffiti, and oddly enough Bible verses, have been written on walls. Appliances have been torn out of the kitchen. Glass litters the floors,

It appear visitors have been burning the house's wood molding in a fireplace off the kitchen.



There's a tarp covering part of the roof.



Signs near the circular brick driveway say "Visitors Parking" and "Adams Properties."



William J. Adams Jr. of Saint Augustine, Fla. is listed as the mansion's owner, according to Onondaga County property records. Syracuse.com/The Post-Standard could not reach him.

Real estate agents and Hall say the mansion has been taken over by a bank that is paying taxes on the property. The taxes total more than $17,000 a year, according to county records.



Back in 2006, before the recession, Bill and Linda Adams spoke with The Post-Standard about The Enclave, their planned subdivision of 13 "farm and equestrian style" homes that would sell for $1 million or more. The minimum house size was to be 4,500 square feet with the maximum set at 10,000 square feet.

There was to be no vinyl siding and each home would have a detached two-story barn structure topped with a cupola and a weather vane, they said.



Local real estate agents said the Adamses plan got swept up in the 2007-2008 financial crisis and the million dollar-plus development never was built. A more modest Enclave development was built where the most expensive home is assessed at $659,000. Most are around $400,000 or less.

The couple did build the model mansion, which at one point was assessed for $1.13 million. With all the damage, the house is now assessed at $751,600.

And now from its hill, the zombie mansion sits boarded up, vacant and waiting to be sold.

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