Proceeds from the sale of the highest-priced home in Northeast Florida history will provide a stunning windfall for a world-renowned cancer charity, The Citizen has learned.
The owner of the $25.5 million Ponte Vedra Boulevard property, entrepreneur Rick Sontag, recently signed it over to the nonprofit organization he founded with his wife Susan Sontag, Sotheby’s broker Michelle Floyd said.
“Think what $25 million is going to do for brain cancer research,” Floyd said. “He gifted the home to the foundation, and the foundation is selling it. So the proceeds will go towards their research.”
As her husband’s aerospace firm began to flourish, Susan was suddenly diagnosed with brain cancer in 1994 — the same year the nearly 3-acre oceanfront home was built.
Despite a grave diagnosis, she waged a successful battle against the disease until her passing in 2022.
The Sontags vowed to establish an organization to fund critical brain cancer research, and the 2002 sale of Rick’s successful Jacksonville-based firm, Unison, enabled that mission.
The Sontag Foundation has expanded into one of the largest brain tumor research funders in the world and continues its work today.
Floyd said Rick was awestruck by his wife’s courage and resiliency in fighting the disease over several grueling decades — and that his commitment to the foundation has only intensified since her death.
“He loved his wife so much,” she said. “He did everything he could to keep her alive when she became ill.”
Rick still lives at 1185 Ponte Vedra Boulevard, but will move to another local residence he purchased once the sale is completed. The new home, Floyd said, is smaller and closer to the foundation where he still works at least five days a week.
The unprecedented listing was previously packaged to include two adjoining lots owned by the Sontags. But Floyd said interest was so intense for the home on its own that they modified the offering.
“It has a huge long winding driveway and it looks like a jungle on both sides,” she said. “It’s so private it’s incredible. You don’t even think you’re in Ponte Vedra when you go up there. I think the bluff is about 30 feet above sea level — one of the highest elevations in the area.”
Designed by Savannah-based Hanson Architects and built by Dana Kenyon, the Mediterrenean-style mansion features cavernously high ceilings and a large atrium illuminated by a roughly 16-foot by 30-foot skylight.
If sold close to the asking price, the transaction will become the highest home sale in Northeast Florida history, eclipsing the $22 million paid by former T-Mobil CEO John Legere for a home on the same gilded stretch last year.
“There is not another parcel like this in all of Northeast Florida,” Floyd said.
3 Responses
That is unbelievable. What a beautiful place what a generous man but it’s a shame that there is cares for cancer and giving that house money to the research department at a cancer place is a waste of money. It could’ve been used for the homeless for the veterans or something more worthwhile than a giant corporation that knows there’s cures for cancer and they don’t use it because cancer is such a lucrative business. Nonetheless He’s a generous man.
Who are you to determine what is more worthwhile? Consider going and making your own money to donate to those causes you listed, as he did for the one he cared about.
I’m sorry you lost your wife to brain cancer. My heart goes out to you as I have lost so many people in my family to cancer and started the fight with my daughter who was diagnosed with ASPS sarcoma a year ago and so far winning the fight, the fight isn’t completely over, she will need treatments of immunotherapy every day for the rest of her life as the cancer spread everywhere and just outside the brain and it could go to the brain as this cancer does with other people. She is 24 years old and just starting her life. I’m grateful for the research and treatments that have kept her alive and will continue to keep her alive and this is a cancer seen in children primarily. I know we can find a cure one day and with research funding I just know it is possible. Thank you for trying to help save millions of other people’s lives. You are a good man! ❤️