Lake of dreams

JORDANELLE, Wasatch County — It certainly would not do to mix your red wines with your white wines.

So you have the separate wine coolers in the kitchen, the better to chill the various vintages at optimal temperatures, according to proper hue.

It would be poor form to have to call Jeeves to adjust your bath water because it has cooled a tad.

Therefore you have the heating element in the part of the tub against which you rest your back.

And under no circumstances should your tootsies tread snow if they don't wish to, nor should your SUV suffer the indignity of sliding on ice.

Thus, life would be incomplete without the heated sidewalk and driveway.

Welcome to Deer Crest, the upper-crustiest place in Utah's latest version of the best address in the West, high atop its 7,950 foot perch on the east side of Little Baldy Mountain, abutting Deer Valley Resort at the Wasatch-Summit county borders.

And Deer Crest — it of the $6.9 million, 8,500-square-foot, ski-in, ski-out home involving the coolers and heaters and other fancy-pants touches described above — is the Zsa Zsa Gabor poster girl for an elaborate recreational/residential/commercial complex that few Utahns may realize is poised to explode.

It is the vast network of developments designed one day to surround and embrace the Jordanelle Reservoir.

"Right now, Jordanelle is the best-kept secret in Utah — maybe the country. People don't understand what's going on up here," said Paul Taggart, joint venture partner for Deer Mountain, another Jordanelle development fronting U-248 on the north side of the reservoir.

In the eyes of Taggart and other visionaries, Tahoe is coming to Utah. Or Sun Valley is coming. Or Jackson Hole.

Or any other playground/neighborhood/enterprise zone catering to the rich and absolutely fabulous with which Jordanelle seeks to compete.

Though Jordanelle is in early first-phase development, it has devoted pilgrims.

"I love Deer Crest. Love it, love it, love it!" Elizabeth "Zibby" Toser gushed over the phone from the Park Avenue apartment in New York where she lives with husband Jim Toser, a securities-banking-commercial real estate mogul.

"We could have built in Sun Valley or Aspen, sure, but this part of Utah has the beautiful lake, the gorgeous mountains, plus the old mining heritage of Park City, like someone has really lived there — as opposed to, say, Vail.

"The people are really nice and the cowboy tradition really appeals to me," said Zibby, an interior designer, who added that the Tosers' Deer Crest home has 12,000 square feet, nine bedrooms and "oh, I don't know how many" bathrooms.