ByChase Peterson-Withorn,
Forbes Staff.
“I
t’s fun to have things that are magical,” says Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers founder Todd Graves, standing near a flat-screen TV in the living room of his backyard treehouse. With three levels and a $400,000 price tag, the hangout—nestled in a 100-foot live oak tree among the sprawling gardens of Graves’ Baton Rouge estate—is less a kids’ playplace and more a tree-home fit for a billionaire.
There’s the standard slide and crow’s nest, of course, but also 450 square feet of outdoor deck space and a 400-square-foot living quarters that includes a cushy family room, a spacious bedroom and a functioning half-bathroom. The pine ceiling uses reclaimed wood from an old sewing factory; the well-stocked bar and an ornate stained-glass bedroom window were salvaged from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. A disco ball hangs in the skylight above the bed, a nod to the decor in Graves’ 900-plus chicken finger restaurants. A 70-foot, Ewok-style swinging bridge connects to a lakefront viewing platform overlooking Louisiana State University’s campus.
