CHRISTIAN COUNTY

Pensmore owner wants builders to tear down castle and rebuild it, attorney says

Giacomo Bologna
GBOLOGNA@NEWS-LEADER.COM

Pensmore Castle was meant to last forever.

Now the owner of the enormous structure in Highlandville wants it torn down, his attorney said, and a new castle erected.

The castle had been designed to withstand the strongest tornadoes and even bomb blasts, a recently filed lawsuit said, but it was knowingly constructed with diluted materials.

The revelation came in the fall of 2014, the suit said, when a man who stood outside the castle's gates, "doggedly” asking to speak to a representative.

The man outside the gates was an employee of the company that mixed the diluted concrete, the suit said, and he was losing sleep over it.

"He described how he tried to stop the scam, but defendants threatened his job," the lawsuit said. "Concerned about how he would feed his family, he continued to participate in it, until, as he described it, his conscience would not allow it."

Construction was halted when the man came forward, and a lawsuit proceeded when tests confirmed his claims, said the attorney behind the suit, Gabriel Berg.

Berg said the structural strength of Pensmore Castle is now unclear.

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Steven T. Huff Family, LLC — which is owned solely by Steven T. Huff —  is seeking $63 million from two companies that helped build the 72,000-square-foot castle, court documents show.

The Christian County assessor pegged the market value of the castle at just under $6 million, but Berg said there's no way to put a price tag on it, saying there's "nothing like it in the world."

Berg said Huff compared his castle to the Coliseum built by the Roman Empire.

Huff wants the companies that built it to "tear it down and build it back up right," Berg said.

Those companies are Monarch Cement Company, of Humboldt, Kansas, and its Springfield subsidiary, City Wide Construction Products. The lawsuit said they routinely cut the amount of a unique construction material mixed into the castle's concrete and likely sold the leftover material, the lawsuit says.

Michael Callahan, the attorney for Monarch Cement Company and City Wide Construction Products, disputed the claims of the lawsuit.

"(The companies) are known for their high-quality products and longtime commitment to customer service," Callahan wrote in a statement. "They will defend their hard-earned reputations against the plaintiff's allegations all the way through trial, if necessary."

Inside the Pensmore mansion

The principal material shorted in the castle's construction is called Helix, the lawsuit said, and it's the "key to Pensmore's exceptional structural integrity design."

Berg said Huff wanted his castle to be built as strong as possible — "that's where Helix comes in."

Invented in a laboratory at the University of Michigan, Helix is an alternative to rebar and was developed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lawsuit said.

While Pensmore Castle was supposed to have an "exceptionally large amount" of Helix — more than 200,000 pounds — the lawsuit said more than 70,000 pounds of Helix never made it into the concrete.

Berg said Huff, an engineer, invested in the company that produces Helix, Polytorx, and he wanted Pensmore Castle to be a model for the world of the company's product.

Pensmore Castle was also meant to be a marvel of heating and cooling technology, Berg said.

According to the lawsuit, Monarch Cement Company has 510 employees and 13 subsidiaries.

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