Archive for 2012-09-16
Reese Witherspoon Lists Los Angeles Lot, Too
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $7,995,000
SIZE: 2.53 acres
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: While celebrity property gossips around the globe went hog wild this week over Oscar-winning movie star and producer Reese Witherspoon putting Libbey Ranch—her historic and published ranch in Ojai, CA—up for sale with a $10,000,000 asking price, a kindly informant we'll call Mandy Canyon whispered to Your Mama that she also (but much more quietly) made a now-vacant parcel in the Mandeville Canyon area of Los Angeles available as an off-market listing with a $7,995,000 price tag.
Avid celebrity real estate-o-philes probably recall that currently-with-child Miz Witherspoon somewhat surreptitiously acquired the equestrian-minded estate—once owned by Tom Selleck—in an off-market deal in August 2010 from silk-robe wearing actor and part-time lawman Steven Seagal for $6,900,000.
Whatever obviously now scuttled plans Miz Witherspoon and her ladder-climbing talent agent husband Jim Toth had for the nearly flat 2.53 acre estate clearly involved the complete removal of an existing 7 bedroom and 9 bathroom Spanish-style residence as well as that of the swimming pool, stables, riding ring and whatever other structures may have been on the property.
What do the real estate experts and otherwise opinionated think? Even though she only bought it just over two years ago is Miz Witherspoon's bucolic spread in Mandeville Canyon worth a million dollars more now that the existing structures have been razed and removed?
Of course Your Mama don't know a pea pod from a zoot suit but it seems to us Mister and Missus Toth are in the mood to shake up their real estate portfolio. Does this mean we may see the happy and procreating couple list her long-time residence in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles? What about the almost 6,500 square foot, quoin-cornered and mansard roofed mini-mansion she owns in her native Nashville? Will that property go up on the block, too? We'll just have to wait and see, won't we children?
listing photo: The Agency
Did Y'all Hear...
Mister Diddy clearly hopes to double his real estate money; Public property records reveal he scooped up the high-floor urban spread in 2005 for $3,820,000. It remains to be seen if that's realistic but not bad work if you can get it, right?
Listing information shows the 2,292 square foot apartment—set 700 (or so) vertiginous feet off the street on the 66th floor of the mixed-used Park Imperial building—was originally designed with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms but is currently configured with just one bedroom, two (or maybe 2.5) bathrooms plus a media lounge and a piano room with built-in wet bar.
Diddy's digs are "fully customized for the most sophisticated living," according to current listing information, and include a marble-clad foyer—natch—and a nearly 500 square foot living room geared-up with 9-foot flat-screen tee-vee and blessed with two full walls of floor-to-ceiling windows with panoramic city and Central Park views. The adjacent and (no-doubt) swankly accoutered eat-in kitchen is outfitted with a breakfast banquette—which we love because we're mad for a well-conceived built-in banquette—and the master suite, a rear flank tucked privately behind the kitchen, is practically crowded with a quartet of closets, two of them walk-ins.
Being the super-slick and filthy rich cat he is, Mister Diddy equipped the apartment with a new-fangled home automation system that controls the window shades, lighting, and state-of-the-art audio/visual equipment.
Mister Diddy putting his big ol' one bedroom up for sale isn't such a shocker to celebrity property watchers and real estate gossips given he's been spotted peeping far more consequential, multimedia tycoon-worthy cribs around town such as an almost twenty million dollar duplex penthouse in TriBeCa, now listed for considerably less at $16.9 million. Maybe he ought to have another look-see around there?
The blinged-out entertainer currently also maintains a waterfront mansion with a dozen poopers on star-studded Star Island in Miami Beach (FL), a hideaway in the Hamptons where he frequently hosts his annual White Party, and a large residence in the exclusive and affluent bedroom community of Alpine, NJ.
exterior photo: Kate Lenova for Property Shark
floor plan: Prudential Douglas Elliman
Adrienne Maloof Lists Bev Hills Mansion Amid Bitter Divorce
LOCATION: Beverly Hills, CA
PRICE: $26,000,000
SIZE: Huge with 8 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Buckle your safety belts, butter beans. As already reported by gossip juggernaut TMZ earlier today, L.A.-based businesswoman Adrienne Maloof of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fame and her Bev Hills plastic surgeon husband Paul Nassif have hoisted their humongous, gilt-trimmed Richard Landry-designed faux-French chateau in the guard-gated Beverly Park community on the market with an engorged asking price of $26,000,000.
Tabloid readers and reality tee-vee watchers aren't surprised by this real estate turn of events since the always bickering in front of the cameras couple have split up and are currently in the early stages of a divorce that's already turned bitter and ugly.
Property records we peeped reveal the quondam couple purchased the unapologetically palatial property in May 2004 for $12,708,000. It doesn't take a mathematics savant or a even functional calculator to see the Maloof-Nassifs hope to double their money less carrying costs, improvements, renovations, maintenance and upkeep, real estate fees, and the various other expenses related to owning a residence and property of this magnitude.
Listing information available online does not currently indicate the square footage of the obviously immense and conspicuously opulent faux-chateau but does show the hulking house sits on almost two, painstakingly manicured and expensively maintained acres with 8 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms. Public records, for the record, show the incorrigibly palatial pile has 7 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms in 12,882 square feet.
Now children, before we really dig in and get our claws dirty, let's have a wee caveat, shall we? Despite her lurid allegations of physical brutality, Your Mama happens to think Mister Nassif comes off on the boob-tube a lovable galoot of a guy and in spite of her (too) tiny feet and terrifying maquillage we find Miz Maloof to be a charmingly nervy and savvy entrepreneur/television personality but we are, even still, utterly confounded to the point of gut wrenching mortification at their wildly extravagant decorative proclivities.
Is it just Your Mama or are there others who also have extreme difficultly getting past the ludicrously palatial and comically ostentatious day-core? Are we more per-turbed by the statue of two hugging children (and small dog) on the park bench near the front door that may or may not be a Seward Johnson situation or more dis-turbed by the several portraits of Miz Maloof sprinkled throughout of the house? For the life of us we can't figure out if we're most particularly and distressingly drawn—like a driver to a mangled roadside car wreck—to the oil painting of Miz Maloof dressed in a ball gown and admiring herself in a hand held mirror or the one above the fireplace in the family room in which she's depicted nearly prostrate on a sofa with a small child—presumably one of her own—perched upon her belly.
Furthermore, we can't decide what is more equilibrium upsetting: the white and gold baby grand in the formal living room that only Liberace could (and should) love or the truly vexatious rocking chair like object set awkwardly in front of the fireplace? Are we more concerned with the ego of someone whose capacious master bedroom looks like it was decorated by the pope himself or do we fret endlessly about the psyche of someone who installs shiny, blood red leather reclining chairs in their home theater? What makes Your Mama's decorative skin crawl more? The frilly floral window treatments in the colossal, two-island kitchen and breakfast room, the gold and tassel trimmed blue brocade drapery extravaganza in the formal dining room, or the red velvet swagging above the windows in the poker-playing room?
The double-gated, high-maintenance grounds are comparatively sedate compared to the faux-Baroque/Rococo decor—there's not a stature of David to be seen in listing photographs—and include a circular fore-court connected by a swooping driveway that wraps around to a second motor court and four-bay garage on the side of the house. Out back there's a soccer pitch-sized lawn, numerous terraces and covered patios, an outdoor kitchen/barbecue center, extensive swimming pool and spa complex, tennis court, and detached guest house converted at least partially to a sports memorabilia-festooned, multi-purpose work out facility.
The $26,000,000 asking price is hardly rare for the hoity-toity 'hood where at least one house once had a terrifically optimistic fifty million dollar price tag but recent sales have come in significantly lower. Comedian/actor Martin Lawrence unloaded his gaudy, 13,855 square foot mansion in June of this year (2012) for $17,200,000. An unusually contemporary, 13,081 square foot residence on 3.5+ acres a couple doors down from Miz Maloof and Mister Nassif's spread—most Beverly Park mansions are steroidal versions of Tuscan villas and Mediterranean manor houses (or whatever)—was sold in January of this year for $21,750,000 and Miz Maloof's castmate Lisa Vanderpump sold her equally opulent and similarly scaled mansion directly across the street last September (2011) for $18,800,000.
As an aside, Miz Vanderpump's former mansion was severely damaged in a fire in late June (2012) and it's not known—at least by Your Mama—whether the new owners plan to repair and renovate or raze and start all over again.
We don't normally mention real estate agents around here—we think they prefer we leave them out of the equation—but it's notable that Miz Maloof and Mister Nassif have chosen Beverly Park honcho Mauricio Umansky (at The Agency) who happens to be married to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' cast member Kyle Richards.
listing photos: The Agency
In-N-Out Heiress Buys Adrián Beltré's Behemoth Bradbury (CA) Compound
SELLER: Adrián Beltré
BUYER: Lynsi Martinez*
LOCATION: Bradbury, CA
PRICE: $17,410,961
SIZE: 16,600 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 14 full and 2 half bathrooms
NOTE TO THE CHILDREN: Scads of photos of the property can be seen here, here, here, here, here here, here and here.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: According to a covert communique from a trusted snitch—let's call him Bradbury Barker—exceedingly well-compensated professional baseball baseball player Adrián Beltré, the former third baseman for the L.A. Dodgers now throwing, catching and swinging for the Texas Rangers, sold his titanic resort-like estate in the über-affluent, suburban community of Bradbury, CA in late August (2012) for the somewhat unusual price of $17,410,961 to Lynsi Martinez, the low-profile heiress to a substantial Southern California-based fast food fortune.
Missus Martinez may not be, Your Mama realizes, a household name in the manner of movie stars like Tom Cruise or trouble-making tabloid train wrecks like Lindsay "In Trouble Again" Lohan and Paris Hilton but her family's 275 (or so) In-N-Out Burger joints spread throughout southern California and the southwest hold near-mythic and cult-like status amongst fast food hamburger connoisseurs who laud their low-cost, high-quality, never-frozen ingredients and not-so-secret "secret menu." They have also made 30-year Miz Martinez remarkably rich with, by at least one fairly recent account, a still-growing net worth of half a billion bucks.
Itty-bitty and decidedly sedate Bradbury, tucked into the often oppressively smoggy foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains about 22 miles (or so) northeast of downtown Los Angeles, might seem to some like an out-of-the-way place for a filthy rich and twice-divorced young mother of toddler twins but it happens to be one of the most expensive enclaves in the entire country and Miz Martinez seems to prefers a low-key if luxurious suburban lifestyle.
In 2010 Forbes ranked Bradbury-Duarte as the most expensive zip code (91008) in the country with a spine-straightening median home price of $4,276,462 and Miz Martinez—now the owner and president of the privately held burger chain and a hardcore drag racing aficionado—was bluntly (and reductively) described in a scathing Wall Street Journal review of a book about the fascinating, deeply religious and (in)famously turbulent In-N-Out dynasty as having "only a high-school education and an affinity for joining off-beat Christian sects."
Property records indicate Mister Beltré purchased the approximately 4.16 acre spread in the ritzy (if starchy) heart of the 24-hour guard-gated Bradbury Estates enclave for $3,425,000 in April 2006 and proceeded to custom-erect a massive, mod-Med/pseudo-Italianate residential monument to his mountain of money and athletic success.
The result of Mister and Missus Beltré's efforts, according to listing information we teased up out of the internets, shows the sprawling compound comprises a 16,600 square foot main house with 7 bedrooms, 11 full and 2 half bathrooms plus a 2,500 square foot guest house with three more bedrooms and two more bathrooms, a recreation building, and a 1,300 square foot, open-air poolside cabana with outdoor kitchen and his and her changing rooms and bathrooms.
Almost as soon as the colossal compound was complete in (or around) 2010 Mister and Missus Beltré heaved and hoed the palatial property on the market with a heavy-duty $19,800,000 price tag. The asking price eventually dipped to $19,500,000—as per online documentation we discovered—before the fast food heiress snatched it up for a bit more than $17,400,000.
The multi-winged mansion is entered through a double-gated circular drive that arches up to a porte-cochere and cavernous, meant-to-impress-the-guests-style foyer finished with inlaid marble floors, curved twin staircases, a glimmering, economy car-sized crystal chandelier, and a soaring, 35-foot high custom painted ceiling. There are spacious formal living and dining rooms—natch—plus a dark-paneled library/office with fireplace and glass-fronted display cases.
More casual quarters include a double-height family room with wood floors, hulking, carved stone fireplace and built-in wet bar. The voluminous family room connects through a wide and shallow archway to a more intimate but still super-sized breakfast room that, in turn, joins up with the commodious, double-island kitchen expensively fitted and equipped with slab granite counter tops, top-grade integrated appliances, a kitchen-sized butler's pantry and more carved corbels and accents than ought to be allowed in a single house.
The super-sized master suite includes (but may not be limited to): an amply-scaled bathroom with two-person soaking tub and separate shower; a custom-fitted closet/dressing room; a living-room sized sitting room with fireplace, intricate molding and direct access to a large balcony and a sizable separate bedroom with second sitting area oriented towards a wall-mounted television.
Some of the compound's indoor amusements include: a 20-plus seat movie theater; fitness room; game room with built-in carved wood wet bar; batting cage; temperature-controlled wine cellar and adjoining tasting room with barrel-vaulted brick ceiling.
Numerous outdoor recreation facilities include (but may not be limited to): deep, shaded dining and lounging loggias; vast terraces that step down to an infinity edge swimming pool and spa; a children's playground with jungle gym and sunken trampoline; a north/south aligned tennis court and separate basketball court; built-in fire pit; several putting greens and sand traps set into an acre or more of rolling lawn.
According to the knowledgeable Bradbury Barker, Miz Martinez owns several other homes in the area including a 6,880 square foot mansion on 2.1 hilltop acres in the guard-gated Gordon Highlands community in Glendora, CA that she purchased in February 2006 for $3,150,000. In late 2010, just prior to her (second) divorce, Miz Martinez spent $1,175,000 on a 5 bedroom and 5 bathroom residence in a gated community in Glendora, CA. that Bradbury Barker snitched to Your Mama is occupied by Miz Martinez's second husband Richard, a former employee of In-N-Out and now an ordained minister.
In addition to the scores of ordinary, under-the-radar rich folks—doctors, lawyers, business people and the like—some of the more illustrious residents of Bradbury include a former porn star turned lady-televangelist, a self-proclaimed (but widely debunked) prophet and faith healer, a prominent civil rights activist and media mogul, an exiled Chinese billionaire automotive tycoon, and a former owner of Packard Bell and his former Hong Kong film actress wife.
Mister and Missus Beltré have moved to Dallas where, property records reveal, in April 2011 they scooped up a large but comparatively puny 8,204 square foot mansion last listed for $2,999,000.
*Although The Bradbury Barker swears the property was purchased by Miz Martinez—and has several times provided us with dead-on accurate intel in the past—property records shield the identity of the owner behind a generically named trust we're unable to link directly to Miz Martinez. That makes the purchase rumor and gossip at this point.
listing photos: Deasy/Penner & Partners via Zillow and Realtor.com
BUYER: Lynsi Martinez*
LOCATION: Bradbury, CA
PRICE: $17,410,961
SIZE: 16,600 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 14 full and 2 half bathrooms
NOTE TO THE CHILDREN: Scads of photos of the property can be seen here, here, here, here, here here, here and here.
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: According to a covert communique from a trusted snitch—let's call him Bradbury Barker—exceedingly well-compensated professional baseball baseball player Adrián Beltré, the former third baseman for the L.A. Dodgers now throwing, catching and swinging for the Texas Rangers, sold his titanic resort-like estate in the über-affluent, suburban community of Bradbury, CA in late August (2012) for the somewhat unusual price of $17,410,961 to Lynsi Martinez, the low-profile heiress to a substantial Southern California-based fast food fortune.
Missus Martinez may not be, Your Mama realizes, a household name in the manner of movie stars like Tom Cruise or trouble-making tabloid train wrecks like Lindsay "In Trouble Again" Lohan and Paris Hilton but her family's 275 (or so) In-N-Out Burger joints spread throughout southern California and the southwest hold near-mythic and cult-like status amongst fast food hamburger connoisseurs who laud their low-cost, high-quality, never-frozen ingredients and not-so-secret "secret menu." They have also made 30-year Miz Martinez remarkably rich with, by at least one fairly recent account, a still-growing net worth of half a billion bucks.
Itty-bitty and decidedly sedate Bradbury, tucked into the often oppressively smoggy foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains about 22 miles (or so) northeast of downtown Los Angeles, might seem to some like an out-of-the-way place for a filthy rich and twice-divorced young mother of toddler twins but it happens to be one of the most expensive enclaves in the entire country and Miz Martinez seems to prefers a low-key if luxurious suburban lifestyle.
In 2010 Forbes ranked Bradbury-Duarte as the most expensive zip code (91008) in the country with a spine-straightening median home price of $4,276,462 and Miz Martinez—now the owner and president of the privately held burger chain and a hardcore drag racing aficionado—was bluntly (and reductively) described in a scathing Wall Street Journal review of a book about the fascinating, deeply religious and (in)famously turbulent In-N-Out dynasty as having "only a high-school education and an affinity for joining off-beat Christian sects."
Property records indicate Mister Beltré purchased the approximately 4.16 acre spread in the ritzy (if starchy) heart of the 24-hour guard-gated Bradbury Estates enclave for $3,425,000 in April 2006 and proceeded to custom-erect a massive, mod-Med/pseudo-Italianate residential monument to his mountain of money and athletic success.
The result of Mister and Missus Beltré's efforts, according to listing information we teased up out of the internets, shows the sprawling compound comprises a 16,600 square foot main house with 7 bedrooms, 11 full and 2 half bathrooms plus a 2,500 square foot guest house with three more bedrooms and two more bathrooms, a recreation building, and a 1,300 square foot, open-air poolside cabana with outdoor kitchen and his and her changing rooms and bathrooms.
Almost as soon as the colossal compound was complete in (or around) 2010 Mister and Missus Beltré heaved and hoed the palatial property on the market with a heavy-duty $19,800,000 price tag. The asking price eventually dipped to $19,500,000—as per online documentation we discovered—before the fast food heiress snatched it up for a bit more than $17,400,000.
The multi-winged mansion is entered through a double-gated circular drive that arches up to a porte-cochere and cavernous, meant-to-impress-the-guests-style foyer finished with inlaid marble floors, curved twin staircases, a glimmering, economy car-sized crystal chandelier, and a soaring, 35-foot high custom painted ceiling. There are spacious formal living and dining rooms—natch—plus a dark-paneled library/office with fireplace and glass-fronted display cases.
More casual quarters include a double-height family room with wood floors, hulking, carved stone fireplace and built-in wet bar. The voluminous family room connects through a wide and shallow archway to a more intimate but still super-sized breakfast room that, in turn, joins up with the commodious, double-island kitchen expensively fitted and equipped with slab granite counter tops, top-grade integrated appliances, a kitchen-sized butler's pantry and more carved corbels and accents than ought to be allowed in a single house.
The super-sized master suite includes (but may not be limited to): an amply-scaled bathroom with two-person soaking tub and separate shower; a custom-fitted closet/dressing room; a living-room sized sitting room with fireplace, intricate molding and direct access to a large balcony and a sizable separate bedroom with second sitting area oriented towards a wall-mounted television.
Some of the compound's indoor amusements include: a 20-plus seat movie theater; fitness room; game room with built-in carved wood wet bar; batting cage; temperature-controlled wine cellar and adjoining tasting room with barrel-vaulted brick ceiling.
Numerous outdoor recreation facilities include (but may not be limited to): deep, shaded dining and lounging loggias; vast terraces that step down to an infinity edge swimming pool and spa; a children's playground with jungle gym and sunken trampoline; a north/south aligned tennis court and separate basketball court; built-in fire pit; several putting greens and sand traps set into an acre or more of rolling lawn.
According to the knowledgeable Bradbury Barker, Miz Martinez owns several other homes in the area including a 6,880 square foot mansion on 2.1 hilltop acres in the guard-gated Gordon Highlands community in Glendora, CA that she purchased in February 2006 for $3,150,000. In late 2010, just prior to her (second) divorce, Miz Martinez spent $1,175,000 on a 5 bedroom and 5 bathroom residence in a gated community in Glendora, CA. that Bradbury Barker snitched to Your Mama is occupied by Miz Martinez's second husband Richard, a former employee of In-N-Out and now an ordained minister.
In addition to the scores of ordinary, under-the-radar rich folks—doctors, lawyers, business people and the like—some of the more illustrious residents of Bradbury include a former porn star turned lady-televangelist, a self-proclaimed (but widely debunked) prophet and faith healer, a prominent civil rights activist and media mogul, an exiled Chinese billionaire automotive tycoon, and a former owner of Packard Bell and his former Hong Kong film actress wife.
Mister and Missus Beltré have moved to Dallas where, property records reveal, in April 2011 they scooped up a large but comparatively puny 8,204 square foot mansion last listed for $2,999,000.
*Although The Bradbury Barker swears the property was purchased by Miz Martinez—and has several times provided us with dead-on accurate intel in the past—property records shield the identity of the owner behind a generically named trust we're unable to link directly to Miz Martinez. That makes the purchase rumor and gossip at this point.
listing photos: Deasy/Penner & Partners via Zillow and Realtor.com
Mary-Louise Parker Gives It Another Go in the Big Apple
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $7,000,000
SIZE: 4-5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Late last night Your Mama picked up a covert communique on our handy-dandy iPhone from our unofficial aide-de-camp Hot Chocolate who'd discovered that famously fearless, award-winning actress Mary-Louise Parker has her 12-into-10-room New York City duplex apartment (back) on the market with an asking price of $7,000,000.
Miz Parker—a single mother of two with an Emmy (Angels in America), a Tony (Proof) and and two Golden Globes (Weeds, Angels in America), not to mention numerous additional nominations—first put her updated and upgraded pre-war Greenwich Village co-operative crib up for grabs with little (or no) fanfare back in March 2012 with a $7,995,000 price tag. The asking price dropped to $7,250,000 before it was briefly taken off the market in early August.
Property records are a bit vague so Your Mama isn't sure exactly when Miz Parker purchased the two-floor, two-unit combination spread—it may or may not have been in June 2003 for an unknown amount of dinero—but we do find clear evidence online that in May 2005 she bought out her philandering ex-man-friend/baby daddy Billy Crudup's interest in the family-sized apartment for a few dollars less than $1,500,000.
The long, lower level entrance hall opens into a spacious, sparely-furnished but art-filled 560-plus square foot living/dining room with beamed ceiling, wood-burning fireplace and Old School parquet floors stained black (or maybe it's a dark chocolate) for a handsome touch of modernity. Half a dozen over-sized windows on two walls provide sweeping views of Washington Square Park and the Empire State Building. The adjacent, S-shaped kitchen may be compact but it's none-the-less impressively outfitted with a walk-in pantry, a built-in banquette and a full suite of top-grade appliances.
There are two potential bedrooms on the lower floor. The smaller, corner room is marked as an office on the floor plan included with current listing information and it appears that Miz Parker converted the larger, lower level bedroom into a fantasy-land playroom space with mural-painted walls that depict—among other things—the famous Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. The Parker children and their friends probably love the ginormous, twig-festooned playhouse/puppet theater in the corner but, honestly chickens, all those child-sized puppets give Your Mama the heebie-jeebies.
A chandelier-lit floating staircase climbs to the second floor where three bedrooms with private poopers—plus a newly refurbished and luxuriously windowed laundry room—spoke off an intimate sitting area with second wood-burning fireplace, shag rug, and a couple of deep, slip-covered sofa pieces perfect for bedtime stories and boob-toob viewing. Pocket doors separate the sitting area from the master bedroom, complete includes a custom-fitted walk-in closet/dressing room, hair and make-up nook, and a spa-style bathroom with two sinks and separate tub and shower.
Our brief and unscientific research shows Miz Parker does not own any other real estate—she's been known to lease homes in Los Angeles where Weeds tapes—and we have no idea if she plans to remain in New York City where she's lived since the late 1980s or if she plans to decamp to another, no-doubt upscale locale. Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Bueller?
listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens
Tinseltown Bigwig Barry Levinson Lists Luxurious Connecticut Compound
LOCATION: Redding, CT
PRICE: $12,900,000
SIZE: 10,000+ square feet, 7 bedrooms, 8 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen children, our ongoing relocation has left us temporarily without immediate or reliable access to the interweb. That is unless we schlep our 47-pound laptop computer to some too-thronged cafe or, as we did today, a whisper-quiet and under-funded public library. We expect to be back solid in a day or two. If any of y'all feel the need to whine about it like a six year old having a temper tantrum, go on witcher bad selves. But before you exert any energy scolding Your Mama and calling us naughty names know it falls on deaf—not to mention dog-tired—ears.
Amid our scores of emails we came across a covert communique from a little east coast birdie we'll call Bonnie Blueblood who thoughtfully and informatively chirped in our ear that Oscar-winning veteran screenwriter, director, producer and occasional actor Barry Levinson and his long-time (second) wife Diana have hoisted their expansive compound in affluent and semi-rurual Redding, CT on the market with an asking price of $12,900,000.
Baltimore-born and -bred Mister Levinson's first Showbiz success came in 1974 when he won his first of two Emmy statuettes for his writing efforts on the outrageously funny The Carol Burnett Show. He picked up two more Emmys, the first in 1985 for producing American Playhouse: Displaced Person (#4.15) and the next one in 1993 for directing Homicide: Life on the Street. His two Emmys keep company with the Oscar Mister Levinson won in 1989 for his direction of Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. He can also boast of five more Academy Award nominations for ...And Justice for All, Diner, Avalon and Bugsy, the latter of which earned him a pair of nods (Best Picture and Best Director).
Some of Mister Levinson's more recent work includes executive producing a variety of boob-toob programs (Oz, The Philanthropist, Copper), writing and/or directing a few screenplays for films, including the 2006 near-flop Man of the Year with Robin Williams and the upcoming biopic Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father with Al Pacino and John Travolta
The bulk of the Levinson's 40+ acre estate was purchased in August 2000 for $10,500,000, according to the property records we peeped. The seller, if anyone cares, appears to have been Joe Montgomery one of the founders of the Cannondale Bicycle Corporation, based in nearby Bethel, CT. Our little birdie told us it was Mister Montgomery who custom built the 10,000+ square foot cedar-shingled main mansion in the mid- late-1990s. Property records also indicate Mister and Missus Levinson snatched up a second, 6.21 acre adjacent parcel a couple years later, in February 2002, for $725,000.
Current listing information shows the 17-room, tri-winged mansion has seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, half a dozen wood burning fireplaces and half a dozen garage bays that Your Mama would bet both our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, are heated and cooled for summer- and winter-time automobile convenience. Annual taxes are a mere $110,458.
An airy central stair leads to the various entertaining and family areas of the residence that include generous formal living and dining rooms, both with fireplaces, a year-round screened porch, also with fireplace and a colossal, eat-in country kitchen with two, Suburu-sized center islands, white Shaker-style cabinets, slab stone counter tops, yet another fireplace and—natch—top-grade commercial-style appliances.
Listing information goes on to state the main mansion also includes a library, screening room and a a film production suite on the lower level.
Upstairs, we gleaned from marketing materials, there's a spacious master suite with dual walk-in closets and bathrooms plus a handicap-accessible suite with elevator.
When the time comes that Mister and Missus Levinson sell their impressive spread in Connecticut—and no doubt there are plenty or Richie Riches ready, willing and able to drop a bundle on this bucolic beauty—they'll hardly be homeless. Your Mama's brief and unscientific research indicates Mister and Missus Levinsons' property portfolio currently includes (but may not be limited to) a modest 1,887 square foot house in the Westwood area of Los Angeles purchased in June 2001 for $804,545 and a three-story, creek-front residence in Annapolis, MD purchased, according to one online database we consulted, in February 2002 for $2,262,500.
Once upon a time Mister and Missus Levinson owned a nearly two-acre estate in the affluent Northern California enclave of Ross that they bought in September 1993 for $2,300,000 and sold in May 2001. We're not quite sure how much they sold the nearly 12,000 square foot house for but we did find some evidence on the interweb the property was on the market in mid-July 2000 for $18,000,000, a number that had plummeted to around $16,000,000 by the end of the year.
listing photos: Halstead Property
