FALMOUTH – Town officials denied a request Thursday night to further reduce the $1.4 million property-tax valuation on a sprawling estate on Woodville Road that once belonged to Shaw’s supermarket heiress Mary Alice Davis.

So for now, the custom-built 17-room house — which Davis sold in 2004 to pay off debts and businessman Eric Cianchette later gave to the University of Maine Foundation — will continue to have a yearly tax bill topping $18,000.

The Board of Assessment Review unanimously backed Assessor Anne Gregory’s valuation without input from the property owner, who was formally notified of the hearing but didn’t attend.

Andrew Preston, a partner in a New Jersey-based banking and investment company that bought the estate in October 2010 for $810,000, had asked the town to reduce the valuation to $1.1 million.

To support his appeal, Preston submitted real estate listings showing the market prices of 12 similar properties in Falmouth. He also told Gregory that he would submit a recent appraisal for 200 Woodville Road, but he informed her before the meeting that he couldn’t find it, Gregory said.

The board determined that Preston failed to provide valid comparable properties or demonstrate that Gregory had made an error in assessing the estate’s value.

“This property was assessed in a fair way,” said board member Mark Porada.

With 9,269 square feet of floor space, the estate is the third-largest house in Falmouth and one of 26 homes in town that can be called mansions because they measure more than 6,000 square feet, Gregory said.

It’s unclear who owns or lives in the house. In January, Preston told the Portland Press Herald that his company, Point Capital Partners of Chatham, N.J., bought the property in 2010 and that he lived there with his family.

However, town tax documents show that the owner of record in 2010, Last Mile Properties LLC, sold the estate in late December to Mark Anthony Trading LLC for $1.1 million. Preston couldn’t be reached for comment.

The market value of the six-bedroom, seven-bathroom contemporary house has fluctuated greatly through the last decade.

Davis, who now lives in Phoenix, inherited the estate from her late husband, Howard Davis, whose father was a founder of the supermarket chain.

To pay off creditors, Davis sold the property in late 2004 to Cianchette. The $4.5 million deal included 160 acres zoned for farm and forest use and a house at 178 Woodville Road, where Cianchette lives today.

Back then, the market value of the house at 200 Woodville Road, including 6.74 acres, was $2.9 million, according to town records.

Cianchette gave the house to the University of Maine Foundation in late 2006. He said the house was too big for his family and he wanted to support the university. At the time, it was the largest gift — valued at $4.2 million — ever made to the foundation.

The foundation tried to develop the estate into a small meeting and conference center, but zoning and nonprofit tax regulations made it difficult. The foundation put the property up for sale in late 2009 for $2.5 million. Preston’s company bought it a year later for one-third of the asking price.

The town’s valuation of the property for tax purposes has been more steady. It was assessed at $1.9 million for several years after a revaluation in 2003, when it included 16 acres. That assessment held even as market values increased through 2008.

Gregory recently dropped the assessment to $1.5 million after the first inspection of the house since before it was completed in 1993. Gregory made several adjustments, including the square footage, reducing the annual tax bill by $5,325, to $19,835.

Gregory dropped it again, to the current $1.4 million, because Preston recently transferred three acres to Cianchette, reducing the estate’s parcel to 3.64 acres. The annual tax bill is $18,088.

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com