'Queen of Versailles' resumes building 90,000-sq-ft. palace

Things are looking up for billionaire couple Jacqueline and David Siegel.

A few years ago, they had to put on hold construction of their 90,000-square-foot palatial home in Orlando, Florida, after the recession put a squeeze on their finances. The couple and their home, billed as the biggest in the U.S., was the subject of the 2012 documentary “The Queen of Versailles.”

Jacqueline Siegel said their fortunes turned around a couple years ago and they resumed construction a year ago. They hope to have the palace completed in the next couple years.

“Things have totally turned around. Things are even better than before,” she said, adding that her husband’s businesses — he is the 79-year-old billionaire founder and CEO of Westgate Resorts and owns businesses that cross into construction, hotel and apartment management, insurance, retail, real estate and timeshares — do “over a billion dollars a year.”

We caught up with Siegel, a former Mrs. Florida who is in Tucson for the Mrs. USA pageant being held this week at Loews Ventana Canyon Resort. The final competition is at 5 p.m. Friday at the resort, 7000 N. Resort Drive.

Siegel, 48, is staying at the resort with her 8-year-old twin daughters — the youngest of her eight children, ranging in age from 7 to 21 (the latter whom she adopted) — spending time when she is not in meetings with the Mrs. Florida contestant and contest coordinators doing a little hiking, sightseeing and searching for scorpions at night with a black light.

“I love Arizona. Florida is just so flat where I live. I really love the mountains and just the change of natural buttes,” she said. “It’s just so different from what we have. And my twins, they just love it. We just bought some baby cactuses.’

During our conversation, Siegel talked about her new and still unnamed reality show with NBCUniversal, which begins filming in mid-September, the couple’s change of fortunes and buying the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel. But mostly, we wanted to know about the palace. Here’s excerpts of that conversation.

What are you going to do with a 90,000-square-foot home?

“The thing is I was almost wishing we could add on because I am running out of space for all of my ideas. But we will do a lot of charity events. The rooms themselves are very large. Just our grand room is probably four stories tall. It’s pretty amazing. It’s not really a house; it’s more like a palace. That’s kind of embarrassing to talk about it like that, but it really is incredible. But we have bowling alleys, two movie theaters — one for the adults and one for the children. … Maybe we will do some private screenings in our theaters for the film festivals.”

Indoor swimming pool I’m assuming?

“Yes we have one indoor swimming pool and we have five outdoor pools.”

The kids have their own bedrooms?

“Yes they do. The twins want to be together right now. … I don’t know what will happen two years from now when they get older.”

How many bedrooms are there?

“I never actually counted. I really don’t know, which is terrible to say. I would guess 15 or so, probably. I know we have 30 bathrooms. I did count that one time.”

You’ll have a staff to clean those bathrooms, right?

“Oh yeah. We have a huge staff now in the house we live in. We’ll probably have 30 people.”

So how big is the home you are currently in?

“Twenty-six-thousand” square feet.

How big is that staff?

“I have 12 housekeepers and five nannies and a chef. We have maintenance guys and three lawn guys. Over 20 I would say.”

What do your parents and friends think about your big house?

“It all happened gradually. When I met my husband we had a four-bedroom house together. And then we started having babies and he said we needed a bigger house. We started getting more children and we needed a bigger house so we bought the one we have now, which is also on a private island that we call Siegel Island. I like being on a private island because I don’t have to deal with neighbors. While we were there and business was booming, my husband said, ‘I really want to build our dream home.’ So then we started planning it on paper and it looked small on paper. I didn’t know it was the largest home in America until this movie came out. I knew it was big, but it’s much bigger in real life than when I was drafting it with an architect.”

You could totally lose your children in a 90,000-square-foot home.

“We do now. We use our cellphones to communicate with each other. The teenagers disappear and we don’t know where they are. They’re hiding somewhere.”

How big is your master bedroom?

“It’s around 4,000 square feet. It is pretty big. We have a living room in it. A kitchenette. I have a big closet. It’s kind of like a girlfriends hangout. And I have a guest suite that’s not counting that 4,000 square feet that’s huge, with its own kitchen, living room and its own bedroom, jacuzzi and walk-in closet that ’s 1,500 square feet attached to the bedroom.”

So what restaurant can we find you in tonight?

“La Parrilla Suiza. I love the chile relleno.”

You’ve been coming to Tucson three or four years now. Any special memories?

“Last year, I found a rubber corral snake in the hotel gift shop. When (my aunt) was sunbathing with her eyes closed, I put the snake next to her. … She looked and she saw the rubber coral snake and she screamed and swatted at it and it went into the swimming pool. Here we had the Mrs. America contestants and their children in the pool — it was so crowded — and someone yells,’Snake!’ They all got out. I felt so bad. … I think everyone is still mad at me.”

Any chance you might buy or build a house in Arizona?

“I have a friend who lives in Phoenix. She’s got like a 30,000-square-foot house that’s pretty spectacular. I told her maybe someday we would come out there and be her neighbor.”