The fun-filled amenities in this home would trump any awkward teen phase, making the path to popularity more like a zipline, no matter how thick the glasses or shiny the braces.

Listed for $12 million, the home includes tennis courts, a 60-foot pool with a spa that can fit 20 people, a pool table, a go-kart track, and bowling alley. Add on a 3,500-square-foot climate-controlled, three-car garage with its own bathroom to use as a basketball court and tons of outdoor space that once housed horses, but could be the grounds for an epic nerf gunfight. It's a kid resort.

But it’s not obvious how it was for the Meyer kids who grew up there in the '90s and 2000s–they’ve since moved on to their adult lives and put the home on the market after their father, Edward Meyer, who built the home with his family in mind, passed away last year. He inherited one of the original U.S. Mercedes-Benz dealerships from his German immigrant father and retired in 2001. It was the oldest dealership on Long Island, New York.

Before the Meyers purchased the 13-acre parcel in 1992 for $700,000, 3736 Meridale Road belonged to Honore, son of Potter Palmer and Bertha Honoré Palmer, the wealthy Chicago socialite who inherited gobs of money after her husband, a developer and hotelier died. Bertha ended up putting Sarasota on the map as an ideal winter vacation destination for wealthy northerners after she purchased 140,000 acres of land in Sarasota and Manatee counties in the early 1900s and became a real estate and farm developer. 

According to Joel Schemmel, the Premier Sotheby’s International Realty agent representing the sellers, Honore gifted the parcel to cherished employees, who eventually sold it to the present owners.

The home is a bit of a time capsule. Back then, all things wood was the way to build, and plenty of brick, too, and the craftsmanship and quality are evident. And in this high-demand market, there’s no need to update finishes–it's best to let the buyer decide.

Schemmel says people who have toured the home so far love the privacy and scale. Despite its central location just south of Clark Road in Sarasota, it’s set so far back that it’s easy to miss. And it's huge.

The two-story main home has a first-floor master wing and an additional six en suite bedrooms, spanning almost 10,500 square feet. A three-bedroom, two-bathroom guest house with a two-car garage spans 1,700 square feet. The main house, guest house and garage sit on roughly three acres of the property, leaving about 10 acres for redevelopment if one wishes, but I bet a kid's wish would be to keep it just the way it is.

Interested? Call Joel Schemmel at (941) 587-4894.