Archive for 2012-09-30
Olivia Wilde Leases in L.A. and Buys in Big Apple (and Some Other Semi-Related Stuff)
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $11,000 per month
SIZE: 3,284 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It was only last May (2011), shortly after the increasingly in-demand actress Olivia Wilde (House M.D., the Tron film franchise, The O.C.) and her Italian aristocrat/documentary filmmaker husband Tao Ruspoli's separation was revealed in the gossip glossies, that the now-divorced couple sold their house in Venice, CA to a high-powered entertainment industry executive and her husband for its full, $3,095,000 asking price.
Interestingly, property records also show that Miz Wilde and Mister Ruspoli still co-own a townhouse-type loft condo—in Venice—originally bought by Miz Wilde's documentary filmmaker mother in 2003 for $1,090,000 before being quickly transferred over to the now-kaput couple.
Anyhoo, a few months before she and her ex sold the house in Venice, property records reveal, cat-eyed and husky-voiced Miz Wilde dropped $2,295,000 on a new pad across town in the hills above arty-farty and celebrity-friendly Los Feliz that she now has available for lease on the open market at $11,000 per month.
Current lease listings Your Mama found on the interweb show the three-story Spanish villa was originally built in 1929 on a steep hillside, retains much of its dignified original detailing and measures 3,284 square feet with four bedrooms and three—or maybe 3.5—bathrooms.
The walled, gated and secured courtyard—the property is equipped with video entry system and surveillance cameras—connects to a turreted entry with original stained glass window, vintage floor tiles and an exposed wood beam ceiling.
A wrought iron-railed stairway descends elegantly into the decadently capacious "formal" living room with wood floors, wood-burning fireplace and several sets of French doors. The formal dining room looks over the living room through a wrought iron railed Juliet balcony and the somewhat compact adjacent kitchen—a rather haphazard melange of vintage and modern—is outfitted with white tile counter tops, glass-fronted upper cabinets, honeycomb-shape red tile flooring, and the ubiquitous-with-celebs high-grade stainless steel appliances.
Other rooms include a semi-circular solarium with pitched and beamed ceiling, a cozy den/office/library with corner fireplace and painted pine paneling and a lengthy, lower-level media room with built-in bar at one end and a wide projection screen that magically retracts into the ceiling at the touch of a button at the other.
Before Miz Wilde's ownership, her now-up-for-rent Los Feliz residence was previously owned or occupied, according to listing information from the time she picked up the property, by "Oscar contenders, world-renowned musicians and iconic puppeteer." We don't know who the Oscar contenders or world-renowned musicians were but the iconic puppeteer, according to property records, was Brian Henson, the prolific, Emmy-winning producer son of Muppet's creator Jim Henson.
The reason Miz Wilde would like lease out her house in Los Angeles may—or may not—have something to do with her hot-and-heavy romance with actor and comedian Jason Sudeikis (Saturday Night Live, Eastbound and Down, The Cleveland Show, 30 Rock) who—as it turns out—resides primarily in New York City where (according to a tattletale we'll call Odette Overheard) Miz Wilde recently scooped up a multi-million dollar crib at The Porter House building in the used-to-be dank, prostitute-packed, blood-scented and impossibly chic and now boutique-lined, Apple Store-anchored and impossibly trendy Meatpacking District.
Property records don't yet reflect a transfer of ownership from Mister Weinberg to Miz Wilde—or anyone else for that matter—so we ask that the children use their noggins and recognize that makes this nothing more than a nugget of unsubstantiated celebrity real estate gossip.
What isn't scuttlebutt, at least according to the meticulous real estate record keepers at Street Easy, is that Mister Weinberg had his approximately 1,950 square foot, low-floor condo listed on the open market until mid-July (2012) with an asking price of $3,495,000 with relatively modest montlhy taxes and common charges that total $3,069.
Listing information from that time shows the sophisticated, art-filled corner unit was designed by the skilled architects at SHoP—the same folks who handled the conversion and expansion of The Porter House building itself—and outfitted with high quality interior fittings and finishings that include Brazilian cherry wood floors, custom built-in cabinetry and super shiny—and no-doubt high-maintenance—stainless steel sinks and vanities in at least two of the three bathrooms.
A walk-in coat closet and half bathroom open off the small but proper entry vestibule that opens into the main living and dining area that's more than 25 feet square with two banks of over-sized, west-facing windows. A sleekly finished, galley-style kitchen extends off the dining area and has glossy, custom Italian cabinetry, snow white counter tops and sinks a full suite of Viking brand appliances. The lack of overhead shelves or cabinetry for dish and food storage is more than made up for by the pair of pantries that bracket the service entrance at the rear of the kitchen area.
A laundry closet, guest bathroom and second bedroom open off a short corridor near the entrance and the master suite opens off a discrete niche in the living room area and includes a fitted walk-in closet and private bathroom with full-sized soaking tub, separate glass-enclosed shower stall, the aforementioned high-maintenance stainless steel sinks and vanity and—if we read the floor plan correctly—the largest medicine cabinet we've ever seen.
The 22-unit, full-service building offers residents part-time doorman service and a video-security system, a sleek lobby, private storage rooms, a bike storage room, fitness room and a landscaped room terrace.
listing photos (Los Angeles): Rodeo Realty and Prudential California Realty (Sherman Oaks)
listing photos New York City): Sotheby's International Realty (via Street Easy)
listing photo (Venice): Charmaine David for Prudential California Realty
Thursday This and That: Patrick Stewart Goes BK
LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
PRICE: $2,500,000
SIZE: 2,176 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The seemingly-sleepless real estate nuts at Curbed revealed this week that knighted, British-born actor Patrick Stewart coughed up $2,500,000 for a 2,176 square foot duplex penthouse perched atop a converted, turn-of-the-century carriage house in Brooklyn's beautiful and family-friendly Park Slope neighborhood.
The smooth-pated and still very—ahem—vigorous looking, 72-year old Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated thespian's new condo crib in The BK has a gated and secured building entrance plus a key-lock elevator that opens directly into an over-sized foyer with powder pooper and oodles of closets and storage space including a large enclosed cubby under the stairs.
The open plan living/dining/kitchen stretches 31 feet with lofty,11-foot ceilings and immaculate, yellow-blond hardwood floors. A massive and modern concrete chimney breast makes a strong—if not entirely successful—counterpoint to the wide row of more traditional multi-paned windows and the fireplace's rugged "mantle [sic] fashioned from the building's original beams" makes a solid—and very successful—connection to the building's history.
The open, center island kitchen is hardly huge but it's expensively-finished with dark, smoke-stained cherry wood cabinetry, white—or near-white—counter tops of unknown material, a white-porcelain farmhouse sink and the customary collection of upper-end stainless steel appliances that including Euro-style range.
The second floor contains a laundry room of unusually-generous-for-New-York-City proportions and two good-sized guest/family bedrooms. One bedroom has a second, very-contemporary, concrete-breasted wood-burning fireplace and both have convenient and direct access to a windowed, Jack-n-Jill style bathroom.
The master suite, privately situated in its own wing across the extra-wide corridor from the other bedrooms, is complete with a walk-in closet and a windowed dressing room, a properly ventilated Old-School meets new-fangled facility with separate claw-footed bathtub and stall shower, and a 200-ish square foot private terrace.
One more flight up, the exceptionally sized, 1,200 square foot roof terrace has an outdoor fireplace and panoramic views over Brooklyn to the towering Manhattan skyline.
Other notable amenities, according to listing information include radiant floor heating throughout the duplex, high-efficiency systems, central heat and air delivery and an additional, locked storage room in the basement.
listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens
Thursday This and That: Ellison Reveals Plans
Never mind that Your Mama blabbed it to the children about six weeks ago, it was finally reported this week by property gossips around the globe that multi-billionaire tech tycoon Larry Ellison dropped a stomach-churning $37,000,000—$36,943,890 to be exact—to acquire former Yahoo! chairman and CEO Terry Semel's kinda wacky, post-modern-minded Michael Graves-designed ocean front compound on Malibu's exclusive and sinfully expensive Carbon Beach.
But, children, as gargantuan as the nearly $37 million clams Mister Ellison dropped for his eighth house on Carbon Beach may be, it's an almost inconsequential drop in his over-flowing pecuniary bucket compared to the half a billion bucks (or more) he reportedly splashed out earlier this year to buy about 98% of Hawaiian island of Lana'i.
The property collecting bajillionaire enters the record books with a downright monumental residential property portfolio that includes more than $200,000,000 worth of prime real estate in Malibu (CA), a massive contemporary mansion in San Francisco's hoity-toity Pacific Heights 'hood and a fully-landscaped 23-acre estate in Woodside, CA, "modeled on a 16th-century Japanese emperor's residence," according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.
Then, there's a sprawling, multi-residence compound on the pristine shore of Lake Tahoe, an historic mansion in blue-blooded Newport, RI that once belonged to the Astor family and a 249 acre estate in Rancho Mirage (CA) with 8 guest houses and a private 19-hole golf course. Oh, and let's not forget the recently acquired garden estate in Kyoto (Japan) that was reportedly listed for $86,000,000 or the 450-plus foot, cruise ship-like yacht co-owned by David Geffen and dubbed Rising Sun.
How-evuh—What the super-spendy media mogul might want with almost the entire island of Lana'i wasn't known...until now.
Many were concerned that Mister Ellison might try to further develop the fledgling—if quite fancy—hospitality options on the otherwise commercially undeveloped former pineapple plantation. Turns out, as he casually revealed in a recent interview on CNBC excerpted by Howzit Howard on the Hawaii New Now website, Mister Ellison actually plans to "turn Lanai into a model for sustainable enterprise" with desalinization plants, a fleet of electric cars, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal powered utilities and an extensive drip irrigation system to maximize produce exports. He went on to describe his future vision of his private island as a "laboratory for sustainability in businesses of small scale."
Well, isn't that lovely? An eco-minded gajillionaire. Or not. Listen, children, Your Mama is always happy to hear more about anybody's adoption of and commitment to sustainable energy options and practices. However—let's get real—just how committed to "green" and other eco-technologies can a man be whose "boat" has a gas tank that holds—we guesstimate based on available intel about other yachts of similar size—well in excess of 200,000 gallons and whose private golf course in Rancho Mirage surely requires a lake's worth of water to keep a deep and unnatural shade of green in a relentlesly arid locale where daily temperatures average well over 100 degrees during in the summer months?
But, children, as gargantuan as the nearly $37 million clams Mister Ellison dropped for his eighth house on Carbon Beach may be, it's an almost inconsequential drop in his over-flowing pecuniary bucket compared to the half a billion bucks (or more) he reportedly splashed out earlier this year to buy about 98% of Hawaiian island of Lana'i.
The property collecting bajillionaire enters the record books with a downright monumental residential property portfolio that includes more than $200,000,000 worth of prime real estate in Malibu (CA), a massive contemporary mansion in San Francisco's hoity-toity Pacific Heights 'hood and a fully-landscaped 23-acre estate in Woodside, CA, "modeled on a 16th-century Japanese emperor's residence," according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.
Then, there's a sprawling, multi-residence compound on the pristine shore of Lake Tahoe, an historic mansion in blue-blooded Newport, RI that once belonged to the Astor family and a 249 acre estate in Rancho Mirage (CA) with 8 guest houses and a private 19-hole golf course. Oh, and let's not forget the recently acquired garden estate in Kyoto (Japan) that was reportedly listed for $86,000,000 or the 450-plus foot, cruise ship-like yacht co-owned by David Geffen and dubbed Rising Sun.
How-evuh—What the super-spendy media mogul might want with almost the entire island of Lana'i wasn't known...until now.
Many were concerned that Mister Ellison might try to further develop the fledgling—if quite fancy—hospitality options on the otherwise commercially undeveloped former pineapple plantation. Turns out, as he casually revealed in a recent interview on CNBC excerpted by Howzit Howard on the Hawaii New Now website, Mister Ellison actually plans to "turn Lanai into a model for sustainable enterprise" with desalinization plants, a fleet of electric cars, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal powered utilities and an extensive drip irrigation system to maximize produce exports. He went on to describe his future vision of his private island as a "laboratory for sustainability in businesses of small scale."
Well, isn't that lovely? An eco-minded gajillionaire. Or not. Listen, children, Your Mama is always happy to hear more about anybody's adoption of and commitment to sustainable energy options and practices. However—let's get real—just how committed to "green" and other eco-technologies can a man be whose "boat" has a gas tank that holds—we guesstimate based on available intel about other yachts of similar size—well in excess of 200,000 gallons and whose private golf course in Rancho Mirage surely requires a lake's worth of water to keep a deep and unnatural shade of green in a relentlesly arid locale where daily temperatures average well over 100 degrees during in the summer months?
Thursday This and That: The Simpsons List
LOCATION: Encino, CA
PRICE: $4,395,000
SIZE: 6,895 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: With unsubstantiated—and denied—rumors in all the celebrity gossip glossies of an amicable divorce in the works, Baptist minister turned Tinseltown talent manager Joe Simpson and long-time wife Tina have hoisted their 6,895 square foot faux-English cottage mini-mansion in Encino, CA on the market with an asking price of $4,395,000, as first reveal by the long-legged blond gal at Trulia Luxe Living.
Missus Simpson—a homemaker as far as we know—and Mister Simpson—a former Baptist minister who was recently charged with (and plead not guilty) to a two-count DUI—are the luxe-living parents of bubblegum pop singer turned dim-witted reality tee-vee star turned budding apparel tycooness Jessica Simpson and her younger, Showbiz-has-been sister Ashlee.
Property records show Mister and Missus Simpson coughed up $3,450,000 for the five bedroom and seven bathroom residence on 1.52, mostly hillside acres tucked into the tail end of a leafy cul-de-sac in The Colony, a guard-gated enclave of 19 luxurious suburban Mcmansions in the affluent Royal Oaks area of Encino.
Current listing information for the obviously meticulously kept and very beige and very traditionally decorated property—it looks painfully generic to Your Mama, like a pricey furniture showroom that caters to middle-brow decorative tastes—shows a double-height copper-roofed turreted entry with high school prom picture-style circular staircase and chestnut-brown parquet wood floors. The parquet continues into the formal living room with fireplace and pitched wood-beam ceiling and on into the formal dining room over-done with thick ceiling moldings and curved row of leaded glass windows.
The parquet flooring extends into some, but not all, of the less formal family areas. These include an octagonal breakfast room with direct backyard access and a roomy, center-island kitchen finished with bone-colored raised panel cabinetry, granite counter tops butler's pantry, white brick accents, and the usual slew of top-grade, commercial-style stainless steel appliances. The parquet floors turn to regular horizontal strip hardwood floors in the spacious—if woefully ordinary—family room with stone fireplace, exposed wood beams on the ceiling and a trio of French doors that connect to a backyard lounge terrace with built-in barbecue station and snack bar that can be shaded by a super-sized electronically-operated awning.
Three guest/family bedroom suites on the second floor are joined by a private office and state-of-the-art media room with jumbo, wall-mounted boob-toob. The commodious, second floor master suite occupies its own wing and is complete with a raised ceiling, a fireplace flanked by faux-distressed built-in cabinetry, dual walk-in closets and a large restroom with inlaid stone/tile flooring, free-standing soaking tub, separate steam-equipped shower, two sinks and a make up vanity. The fifth bedroom—outfitted as a home fitness room—has a private bathroom and separate entrance that makes it suitable for use by long-staying in-laws or a live-in domestic.
A man-made waterfall tumbles down a pile of (possibly fake) boulder into the free-form swimming pool—with grotto—nestled into a meandering flagstone terrace between the back of the house and the fully-landscaped and terraced hillside. Other backyard amenities include a sunken spa, de rigueur built-in fire pit and an outdoor fireplace (with a giant, decorative cross mounted on the breast), a petite putting green, a lighted sport court and an elevated gazebo with through the tree-tops view of the San Fernando Valley and two, Old Timey porch swings hung from the exposed rafters.
Property records indicate Mister and Missus Simpson also maintain a 5,229 square foot residence in an upscale but undistinguished development in Woodway, TX—that's just outside of Waco—purchased in February 2002 for $372,400.
listing photos: Sotheby's International Realty
Prolific Producer and Provacateur Gavin Polone Lists L.A. Compound
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,900,000
SIZE: 4,750 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, while Your Mama and our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, waited out a particularly scorching afternoon in the comfort of a blissfully air conditioned house, we combed through some of the newer real estate listings in Tinseltown's posh and pricey Platinum Triangle and turned up a multi-acre mini-compound perched privately on a curved ridge line high above Beverly Hills, CA this is now available on the open market with a plump, $15,900,000 price tag.
A quick scan of the public property records reveals the owner of the gated estate is the sassy, brassy, smart and savvy television and film producer Gavin Polone. Mister Polone may not be a household name in Pensacola or Kalamazoo but, children, he's absolutely a well-known entertainment industry veteran who's bumped around Hollywood since the late 1990s.
In addition to his (no-doubt lucrative) executive producer credits on a couple of successful boob-toob programs like the quirky comedy sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and the single mother prime time soap story Gilmore Girls, Mister Polone also executive produced a handful or two of much less successful programs (Jane By Design, My Boys, The Showbiz Show with David Spade, Hack) as well as a scary slew of schlocky, made-for-TV movies (Life at Five Feet, The Angriest Man in Suburbia, and Backyards and Bullets). Along the way Mister Polone also executive produced a few pictures for the big screen that include Zombieland, Panic Room with Jodie Foster and the star-studded mockumentary flop Drop Dead Gorgeous.
In 2011 Mister Polone received the 7th of his eight Emmy nominations for the made-for-TV movie Cinema Verite, a fictionalized drama about the production of the ground-breaking,1973 television mini-series An American Family.* His seven other Emmy nods—none of which resulted in wins—were all for Curb Your Enthusiasm. Alas, Mister Polone has always been an Emmy bridesmaid and never a bride.
A recent profile and interview of Mister Polone by Patrick Goldstein in the L.A. Times—or maybe it only appeared on the L.A. Times blog, we're not actually sure—described him as "prickly, whip-smart, wickedly funny, fiercely libertarian and never shy about sharing his contrarian views about the entertainment business." The article goes on to say that the unflinchingly Mister Polone will—and does—fearlessly "bite the hand that feeds, taking on many of the sacred cows of showbiz" in his must-read weekly column for New York magazine's sprawling arts and culture website Vulture.
Property records are a wee bit perplexing—or maybe we're just too pie-eyed to parse them—and indicate that Mister Polone picked up the three parcels that comprise the 2.32 acre compound in more than one transaction sometime in 1998, 1999 and/or maybe early 2000 for a not-quite-clear amount of money. Whatever he paid, a dozen or more pre-bubble years ago, for the trio of contiguous properties—tucked privately behind gates at the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac at the tippy top of the trendy and terrifically expensive Trousdale Estates—Your Mama thinks it's probably pretty safe to say it was a mere fraction of its nearly 16-millon smacker asking price.
The low-slung, single-story main house sits on the largest of the three parcels and, according to property records and current listing information, was originally built in 1960 and looks to Your Mama like a contemporized, classic California ranch that measures 4,750 square feet with four bedrooms and four—or maybe 4.5—bathrooms.
A discreet front door leads to an expansive, open-plan main space with polished concrete floors, a fireplace and a wide bank of sliding glass doors. Low book shelves divide the sunken living room from the dining room where a deep niche is fitted with a low, floating cabinet and two rows of floating picture/art display shelves.
The sizable, if unusually-shaped kitchen has custom cabinetry that may or may not be walnut or mahogany—some with frosted glass doors—and the expected collection of top-grade, commercial-style appliances typically found in multi-million dollar residences. An adjoining breakfast room has two walls of divided windows with lush garden view.
The polished concrete floors continue into the den/family room but appear in listing photos to switch to some sort of neutral-colored carpet tile in the bedrooms. The spacious but hardly huge master suite includes a corner fireplace, direct access to the outside through sliding glass doors and a sky-lit walk-in closet with built-in cabinets and hanging racks. The attached master bathroom with double sinks, sunken soaking tub and separate shower is divided—we're sorry to say—by a full-height wall of glass brick. There are, of course, absolutely excellent uses for glass brick in certain styles of residential architecture—like, say, Streamline Moderne. But, hunnies, with all due respect to Mister Polone—who we do respect—this isn't, in Your Mama's humble and utterly meaningless opinion, one of the better uses of glass brick we've come across.
Anyhoo, the main house opens to various, terraces, broad decks that lean out over the canyon and a flat lawn are just about big and private enough for a compact game of strip croquet. A wide set of stone steps ascends from the lawn and through a cut in a mid-height hedge aligned with the slender, dark-bottom swimming pool and slightly elevated spa simply set into a flat patch of thick, green grass. At the far end of the swimming pool a striking and pleasantly symmetrical, canyon view contemporary pool-/guesthouse pavilion with clerestory windows and alternating exterior panels of wood and glass. Inside, the airy, concrete-floor space has a bathroom, kitchenette, fireplace and built-in Murphy bed. A second, gated parking area is located behind the pool-/guesthouse.
We're not privy to any intel about whatever Mister Polone's future real estate plans may be once he sells his Bev Hills compound but should the firebrand desire a significant downsize, property records show he also owns a fairly ordinary, 1,946 square foot residence—purchased in April 2009 for $1,125,000—set on a hillside above one the rugged canyons that shoot north into the Santa Monica Mountains out of the proto-suburban, convenient-to-Tinseltown community of Sherman Oaks.
*Note the the children: If you've never seen An American Family, you really should. Its nearly impossible to find a copy of the 12-episode series that first aired on PBS, but it's definitely worth the effort.
listing photos: Rodeo Realty
Paul Haggis Lists Santa Monica Mini-Manse
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $5,250,000
SIZE: 5,690 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Two weeks ago, the award-winning television and movie screenwriter/producer/director Paul Haggis and his estranged, former-actress second wife Deborah Rennard quietly hoisted their long-time family home in Santa Monica, CA on the market with a $5,250,000 price tag.
We don't know a pouf from a poof, of course, but If Your Mama were the betting type—and we're not—we'd wager Big Daddy's citrus ranch up in Middle-of-Nowhere, CA that this mini-mansion in Santa Monica has lately been occupied primarily (if not exclusively) by soon-to-be second-ex-Missus Haggis, once a small-bit actress most known for her role as Texas oilman J.R. Ewing's loyal secretary on the 1980s nighttime soap story Dallas.
The couple have been amicably uncoupled for a few years now and Mister Haggis, who sired one child with Miz Rennard and three with his first wife, has reportedly been spending more time in New York City. In June 2010 the newly-single-again Showbiz scribe shelled out $3,950,000 on a 2,948 square foot loft-condo bachelor pad in SoHo with, according to listing information from the time of the purchase, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and monthly taxes and common charges of $5,397
A notably prolific screenwriter, Mister Haggis has toiled in the trenches of Tinseltown since the late 1970s and early 1980s when he wrote for a heavy-duty handful of campy if iconic sitcoms that include Love Boat, Diff'rent Strokes, One Day at a Time and The Facts of Life. In the late '80s Mister Haggis was awarded an Emmy for his writing work on the prime time soap story thirtysomething and in the 1990s he primarily penned tee-vee crime and law dramas (L.A. Law, EZ Streets, Walker, Texas Ranger and Family Law).
His upwardly mobile foray into the world of cinema didn't begin in earnest until the early 2000s and almost immediately resulted in the much-gushed over and award-winning movies Crash, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, all three of which earned Mister Haggis Academy Award nominations. In 2004 Mister Haggis was awarded two of the plummiest of the Oscars—both for Crash, one for Best Original Screenplay and the other for the Best Motion Picture of the Year.
His output seems to have slowed in the last few years but, let's be honest, who could blame him if he wanted to slow down and shift focus a little bit after a pretty damn spectacular, non-stop thirty year (and counting) career? Mister Haggis's more recent efforts on the small screen (The Black Donnellys) and the big screen (Quantum of Solace, The Next Three Days) have not resulted in such bell-ringing accolades and, indeed, Mister Haggis may very well be less well known the last few years for his inventive screenplays as for his daring, full-throttled, articulate and very public renunciation of Scientology.
Mister Haggis voluntarily belonged to the religious organization for nearly 35 years but bitterly parted ways with the group in 2009 and, in a eye-popping early 2011 profile in The New Yorker entitled The Apostate, unequivocally called the polemical organization "a cult." But, children, fascinating as Mister Haggis' personal story may be—and a real damn ring tailed doozy of a tale it is—it's his real estate story we're here to discuss.
Property records show Mister and soon-to-be-second-ex-Missus Haggis paid $2,618,520 for the property that current listing information indicates spans a prairie-flat, 13,000-plus square foot corner lot located less than a mile from the beach and hosts a chunky, tree-enshrouded, East Coast-y sort of grey-shingled mini-mansion with 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms in 5,690 square feet.
A shrub- and boxwood-lined slate walk way (which we like), passes under an small arbor (which we don't) and cuts across a verdant, shaded lawn to the front door that opens dramatically into a mostly beige, unexpectedly spacious double-height entry with gleaming wood floors and a glimmering, rich-old-lady crystal chandelier.
There are—natch—predominantly beige and decoratively traditional formal living and dining rooms, the former with a fireplace and large enough to accommodate a baby grand piano and the latter with a steeply vaulted and sky-light dotted ceiling and a wide bank of French doors to the exterior entertainment areas.
Less stiff—if equally beige—family quarters include a giant, quite bright and faintly rustic, country-style eat in kitchen. This area is neatly outfitted with more gleaming hardwood floors, crisp white raised-panel cabinetry, gray (or maybe greenish-gray) stone counter tops, commercial-style appliances, a center island snack counter, and a built-in desk where Esmerelda the housekeeper can clip coupons and keep track of the floor waxing schedule.
An adjoining breakfast room opens into the backyard, as does the cavernous family room with high-drama exposed beam ceiling and flat-screen tee-vee built in to an entertainment center with enclosed storage cabinets—for games, scented candles, various paraphernalia, etc.—and two expanses of book shelves filled with actual books. We adore the deep window seat in the corner of the room where Your Mama can imagine spending hours upon hours reading and napping but—have mercy!—did soon-to-be-ex-Missus Haggis and/or Mister Haggis ever meet a shade of beige over which they did not break out in a sweat of decorative desire? Seriously!
Listing information indicates there are three bedrooms on the lower level, one a second master suite and another probably small enough—and probably also ill-located enough—to be identified as "Guest/Maids Quarters."
The second floor can accessed by a grand staircase in the (mostly beige) front foyer that somehow manages to be both amazingly ho-hum and Scarlett O'Hara worthy, or a far more prosaic staircase in the kitchen. A loft landing with book-filled bookcases connects to a private office/study with built-in wood cabinetry and a guest bedroom with private bathroom. Finally there is the tastefully if blandly decorated primary master suite with fireplace, over-sized walk-in closet and—not at all surprisingly—a pale beige bathroom with double sinks, soaking tub and separate, glassed-in and steam-equipped shower.
Several rooms along the back of the house open though French doors to a huge, slate terrace partially shaded by a slatted pergola. The terraces steps down to a built-in outdoor kitchen/barbecue center with snack counter and ambles down again to a shaded patch of grass where one might understandably expect to find—but does not find—a swimming pool and/or spa. Five and some million bucks in Santa Monica just don't buy a millionaire what it used to, does it? There is, perhaps as some consolation, also a detached three-car garage off the alley that runs behind the property.
Although they've owned their (former) family spread in Santa Monica for a dozen years, a slow peek and poke around public property record databases reveals Mister and soon-to-be second-ex-Missus Haggis together and separately bought and sold a significant amount of property during their 12-or-so years of marriage.
In May 2012 the now-kaput couple took a loss when they sold a small condo in Chicago, IL for $191,500 that they picked up in (presumably) happier times, in June 2006, for $242,000 and in August 2008 Mister Haggis coughed up $2,365,000 for a 2,262 square foot, single-story ranch-style residence a few blocks away from the family homestead in Santa Monica that he sold in July 2010 at a considerable loss for $2,000,000.
Sometime in 2002 or 2003—depending on where online one looks, and along with another non-celebrity couple, Mister Haggis acquired a pair of petite and charming if somewhat nondescript, side-by-side residences in Clearwater, FL that at some point he came to own on his own. Clearwater is, of course, the official headquarters of the Church of Scientology Corporation where acolytes of the secretive and frequently controversial religious organization travel to get audited—or whatever—at a non-contiguous campus that Scientologists reverently refer to as Flag Land Base. Mister Haggis may have left the church but is yet, according to property records we peeped, to unload his Clearwater cribs.
In June 2000 they took in $2,129,000 when they sold a 3,568 square foot house in Santa Monica they'd purchased just a couple years earlier for an unknown amount and about the same time in 2000 that they bought the Santa Monica mini-manse now on the market for $5,250,000, Mister and Missus Haggis also scooped up a vacant, ocean-view residential parcel in Pacific Palisades that they did not develop and sold in 2008 for undisclosed amounts.
listing photos: Prudential California Realtors
Sheryl Crow Lists California Compound
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,950,000
SIZE: 11 acres, 3 houses
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It looks like the Grammy winning singer-songwriter is leaving Los Angeles, or at least she wants to sell her gated 11-acre compound in the Hollywood Hills that was just listed as a "private celebrity compound" with an asking price of $15,950,000.*
Listing information shows the multi-parcel property is comprised of three houses (above) that include a remodeled and restored 1925 Spanish Revival main house with 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms plus a double-height foyer, step-down living room with fireplace and high beamed ceiling, formal dining room with vintage floor tiles. There's also an intimately scaled library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and a half-vintage 1950s/half modernized eat-in kitchen with adjoining family room area.
The highest of the three residences that comprise the compound, a 1909 Craftsman with 3,335 square feet (as per property records) sits above the swimming pool complex and includes three bedrooms, large living and dining rooms—there's a wood burning fireplace in the living room—a small kitchen with restored vintage appliances and fittings, three vintage bathrooms, a small television viewing room, and another small room with an Old-Timey upright piano.
Miz Crow acquired the three residences in what appear in property records to be two separate transactions. The first came in February 1998 when she paid $1,800,000 for the smallest of the three parcels—just .25 acres—that includes the 5,437 square foot main house. In December of the same year she shelled out another $3,300,000 to acquire two adjacent and contiguous parcels. One parcel measures 1.2 acres with a 1,334 square foot 19th-century cottage and the other 8.87 acres with a 3,335 square foot Craftsman residence.
Miz Crow also owns a gulf-front residence on the Florida Panhandle between Pensacola and Panama City in Santa Rosa Beach, FL and a 50-plus acre spread in (suburban) Nashville, TN purchased last year for $5,225,000.
Although she's been trying to unload it for year Miz Crow is still saddled with Cross Creek Farm, a 150 (or so) acre equestrian-oriented estate in pastoral College Grove, TN. She put the farm on the market for the first time—that we know of—in May 2010 with a $7,500,000 asking price and by August 2011, after a failed auction of the property, the asking price dipped to as low as $4,500,000 but it's currently still on the open market with a $6,399,000 price tag.
*Thanks to all the children who turned Your Mama on to this listing just moments after it went live.
listing photo: Dream Home Photo for Nourmand and Associates
Stella McCartney To Sell London Bacherlorette Pad
LOCATION: London, UK (Notting Hill)
PRICE: £2,500,000
SIZE: 1,980 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 full and 2 half bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Its not often we get to discuss a celeb-owned residence in the terrifically chic and impossibly expensive international über-capital of London where an always reliable and trusted informant—let's call him Harry Hound—tells Your Mama that PETA-friendly fashion designer and rock-n-roll scion Stella McCartney's (former) bachelorette pad in London's natty Notting Hill nabe is up for sale—and currently under offer/in escrow—with an asking price of £2,500,000.
Two-and-half million pounds maybe doesn't sound like so much moolah in the rarefied world of celebrity real estate to all us Continentals and Americanos, but according to Your Mama's hard-charging currency conversion contraption that actually works out, at today's rates, to a much more substantial sounding 3,141,770 Euros and 4,040,550 U.S. dollars.
Although Miz McCartney was born to a silver-spooned life of fame, fortune, nepotism and privileged access—her father is former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and her mother is the late photographer/activist Linda McCartney—she is not some hair-brained heiress like, say, Paris Hilton who fritters her life away with a slew of silly (albeit reasonably successful) reality tee-vee programs and a fleet of douche-y cars like horrendous, 200-and-some thousand clam Barbie-pink Bentley GT. Instead, Miz McCartney has admirably forged her own impressive, respectable and successful path as a much lauded and applauded fashion designer.
In 1997, at the dewy age of 25 and just two years after graduating from the prestigious Central St. Martins design school in London, Miz McCartney was—to predecessor Karl Lagerfeld's mild skepticism—appointed Creative Director of the venerable, high-brow Paris-based label Chloé. Four years later, in 2001, she launched her own eponymous label that now encompasses lingerie, perfume, skincare products and clothes for the kiddies. Over the years Miz McCartney has designed Madonna's wedding dress, made sporty outfits for professional tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, created successful collaboration lines with mass market retailers H&M and Target, and in 2011 she was given the Red Carpet Award by the The British Fashion Council. A staunch and vocal animal rights activist, Miz McCartney does not wear or use leather in her designs. She does, for the record, make use of sensitively harvested animal by products such as silk and wool.
In August 2003 Miz McCartney hitched her wagon to publisher turned high-end and high-design furniture purveyor Alasdhair Willis who co-founded of slick and sophisticated, late-1990s design magazine/manifesto Wallpaper* and later co-founded the design-world zeitgeist-y Established & Sons furniture and design showroom that promotes the high-end and high-style designs of contemporary British and Britain-based designers.
The newlyweds—who bought a stunning 160-acre country estate about 120 miles outside London in Bishampton, Worcestershire before they were married—reportedly moved into the Miz McCartney's bacherlorette pad on leafy, serpentine, and affluently trendy Westbourne Park Road that she purchased, according an un-sourced report on the internets, in the late 1990s for around £695,000.
The stylish and savvy couple quickly began to procreate—they have four little ones now—and in 2007 dropped £4,750,000 on a pair of adjoining, down-on-their-heels Notting Hills Gate properties with a staggering 45 bedrooms and previously used as some sort of rooming house or hostel. Miz McCartney and Mister Willis reportedly converted the run-down buildings back to two single family homes, sold off one and moved into the other that's been reported to now include five bedrooms, a library, gym, home theater and, possibly, a swimming pool in the basement.
No longer in need of her Notthing Hill bachelorette pad turned family homestead, it went up for sale some time ago, according to our man on the ground, Harry Hound, for £3,000,000 before the price was lowered to it's last asking price of £2,500,000.
Current listing information and marketing materials show the unassuming yet gleaming, dove-gray stucco townhouse-type residence spans a relatively modest 1,980 square feet over four floors with a total of three bedrooms and two full and two half bathrooms.
Down below, in the half-subterranean lower ground floor, the large dining/family room has a second, under-the-stoop entry for deliveries, domestics and dirty dogs and a second, also convenient but privately situated and properly ventilated half-bathroom with direct back garden access. The compact but well-equipped galley-style kitchen has blond hardwood floors, crisp, white Shaker-style cabinetry, butcher block counter tops, and snow-white subway tile back splashes. French doors connect to the terraced and planted rear garden where a circular picnic bench was playfully custom-built around a skinny tree trunk on the upper level.
Two guest/family bedrooms on the second floor each have fireplaces flanked by built in wardrobes and share a split, hall bathroom. The loft-like master suite occupies the entire top floor and includes a completely open-plan bathroom that lacks any real privacy from the rest of the room. It does not appear in the floor plan that there are any actual closets or wardrobes in the master bedroom, which is on obvious problem for obvious reason, but there is direct and private access to a glassed in galled and tiny terrace on the roof.
listing photos and floor plan: Bective Leslie March
