It took more than two years to complete Clarke Adams’s DC Ranch retreat. But with a resulting residence that can act as a home away from home for 20 of his nearest and dearest, the wait was well worth it.
A hawk regularly visits his backyard, a bobcat and hummingbirds are always rediscovering Barbara’s Secret Garden, and each time Clarke Adams enters his DC Ranch home, he visits it in a new way, too.
With interior design by Scottsdale’s Judy Fox, Allied Member ASID, his Western Ranch-style home looks toward the 17th fairway of the golf course at DC Ranch, through a colorful planted landscape and peripheral desert. Beyond, a thousand feet lower in elevation, are the lights of Scottsdale and Phoenix. Rising behind him are the rock-strewn McDowell Mountains, close enough to climb.
Designed by Jeff Biever and built by Scottsdale’s Fisher Custom Homes, Adams’s home has 5,300 square feet of sun-suffused space on just more than an acre with three bedrooms and three and a half baths. Following a 26-month design/construction schedule, Fox added showcase space that is both warm and livable. For more than three decades, Judy Fox Interiors has provided high-echelon designs for exclusive homes in Scottsdale, Paradise Valley and Phoenix.
In total, including a four-car air-conditioned garage, a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath 800-sq.-ft. guest house and extensive covered outdoor areas, he enjoys 9,700 square feet of Arizona lifestyle. “My son, David, and I climbed the mountains one day—off trail,” says Adams, an Ohio native who attended Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and Columbia University in New York City. He and his late wife, Barbara, moved to Scottsdale in 1999 and began building this, their second home, in 2002. “We had climbed Exum Ridge in the 13,000-foot Grand Tetons in Jackson Hole, Wyo., so we thought, ‘How tough could this be?’ But, given the scorpions, it’s an adventure we won’t be repeating in the near future,” he adds, with a smile.
If he wants a less adventurous hike than one up the McDowells, Adams rides his racing bike on a 1,000-foot hill climb to Silverleaf Country Club, about a mile away through birdsong neighborhoods and the high desert of DC Ranch. Formerly a 43,000-acre cattle ranch, DC Ranch became one of Arizona’s finest gated golf communities in 1993. “It’s a perfect setting for my lifestyle,” says Adams, a financial-industry professional who summers in Jackson Hole. “During the nonsummer months, DC Ranch provides a stunning setting with solitude, golf, hiking, road-biking—and shopping.” Nearby is Market Street at DC Ranch, with its cozy restaurants, stores and cafes.
