The late Thomas Stewart’s family has quietly sold almost all of Stewart’s sprawling Misty Isle Farms estate — 18 years after the longtime islander first put the 525-acre Vashon compound on the market.
The biggest sale was recorded in April, when a Stewart trust sold 117 acres — including Stewart’s former 6,500-square-foot home, two guest houses, a driving range, horse and cattle pastures, artificial lakes and extensive gardens — for $8.65 million to a limited liability corporation with a Florida address.
Altogether, an analysis of King County property records shows, 42 of the 44 tax parcels that once comprised Misty Isle Farms have been sold to 19 different buyers, for a total of nearly $29 million. Stewart’s successors began selling off the estate in pieces in 2021 after more than a decade of unsuccessful efforts to market the entire complex to a single buyer.
Stewart-related entities now own just 20 acres, according to records. That’s less than 4 percent of an estate once touted in a real-estate listing as a “true island paradise.”
The recent buyer of the 117 acres that includes Stewart’s former home is identified in county property records as Mystwood Vale LLC. It’s controlled by two people, Brian Widrig and Taylor Nixon, and has a mailing address in Ocean Ridge, Florida, Washington state corporation records show.
That address is a beach house on the Atlantic that Widrig purchased last year, according to Palm Beach County, Florida, property records. Repeated efforts attempts to reach Widrig by phone and email were not successful.
Another recent buyer: Maggi McClure, executive director of the Vashon Sheepdog Classic, which once attracted big crowds to its annual herding competition on a Misty Isle Farms pasture. The last public edition of the event was in 2019, although an edition for dog-handlers only was held in 2021.
Records show that in May McClure purchased 20 acres, mostly pasture, on Southwest 232nd Street for $825,000. It’s not the same pasture where the Sheepdog Classic was held.
McClure, reached by text, did not rule out the possibility that her newly purchased land could someday be the site of a re-envisioned sheepdog trial, though she said no plans for such an event were currently in the works.
“Who knows, a future dog trial may be in the works — maybe something community-based,” she wrote.
Before the sell-off, Misty Isle Farms was bounded, roughly, by 232nd on the south, Wax Orchard Road on the west, Southwest 220th Street on the north and 115th Avenue Southwest on the east.
A few parcels spilled north of 220th and south of 232nd. The estate was bisected by Old Mill Road.
Stewart, whose Services Group of America was one of the state’s largest privately held companies, assembled Misty Isle Farms over several decades. He raised Black Angus cattle there, and allowed island equestrians to ride its wooded trails. He also sponsored Vashon’s Fourth of July fireworks show.
Stewart was a major Republican donor; for years he hosted the annual King County Republican picnic at Misty Isle. Its headliners included such GOP luminaries as Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp.
Stewart relocated his legal residence and business to Arizona in 2005 and 2006, blaming Washington’s estate tax for forcing the move. He died in a helicopter crash near Phoenix in 2010 at age 64.
Stewart first listed Misty Isle Farms for sale in 2007 for $125 million. As years passed with no deal, the asking price dropped precipitously — to $43 million in 2014, then $28 million in 2017.
Once Stewart’s successors switched gears and began marketing the estate in chunks, parcels in the less developed part of the compound, west of Old Mill Road, sold first. King County Parks bought the largest piece in 2022 for $4 million — 110 acres that include the former Sheepdog Classic pasture, the forested corridor of salmon-bearing Fisher Creek, and four miles of trails.
Most of the parcels east of Old Mill didn’t start changing hands until 2023.
Most of the 18 private buyers of pieces of Misty Isle are from the Puget Sound area. Several own homes elsewhere on Vashon, county records show. Members of Seattle’s prominent Wright family, owners of the Space Needle, have acquired a total of about 50 acres.
Other purchasers have come from as far away as Oregon, California, New Hampshire and Florida.
Six buyers acquired Misty Isle properties with existing homes. Two others have built new houses, records show, and another has applied for a building permit.
The owners of one 12-acre parcel on Wax Orchard Road are growing peonies and other flowers commercially. Two parcels south of 232nd are part of an animal sanctuary.
Three parcels have been resold, and two more — one undeveloped, one with a house — are on the market now.
Stewart-related entities still own two 10-acre parcels on 232nd, both with houses. One was listed for sale May 14 for $885,000; the listing describes the two homes on the property as “fixers.”
Eric Pryne is a retired Seattle Times journalist. Elizabeth Shepherd, The Beachcomber’s reporter, contributed reporting to this article.