Archive for 2013-03-10
Weekend Wrap Up (03.15.13): Penthouse at the Pierre
The positively palatial penthouse pad, perched proudly atop the super-posh Pierre on Fifth Avenue and purchased by Mister Zweig in 1999 for a then record breaking $21,500,000, was previously and long listed from in 2003 until the fall of 2008 with a then unfathomable $70,000,000 price tag. At that time listing information showed maintenance charges rang up $38,720 per month. That's a pearl clutching $464,640 every year for the privilege of living atop one of the most exclusive—if Old School—hotel and residential towers in all of New York City.
Cozier living quarters are located on the lowest level, the 41st floor, and include a surprisingly small kitchen and a corner living room with adjoining dining area/study. Other notable amenities include an oddly located sauna—on the 43rd floor opposite two guest bedrooms—and a private elevator that services all three floors of the penthouse.
The impossibly swish Pierre is the same building where a bevy of millionaire, billionaires, potentates and international power players own primary residences and pieds-a-terre. Just to list a couple there's Harrod's owner and British royal family hater Mohamed Al Fayed, media tycoon Sumner Redstone and fashion mogul/socialite Tory Burch who lives in a massive 9,000 square foot multi-unit combination spread on the 9th floor that she was granted in her divorce from obscenely rich venture capitalist Chris Burch.
Some of the children who follow these things closely will recall that fashion world icon Valentino's business partner and man-friend Giancarlo Giammetti sold his art-filled pad at The Pierre last year for $8,000,000. He bought the apartment, as it turns out, from Pierre Berge, an antique dealer better known in some circles as the former consort of French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.
listing photos: Brown Harris Stevens via Curbed
floor plan: Curbed
Weekend Wrap Up (03.15.13): Natasha Bedingfield
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $329,900
SIZE: 1,380 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Your Mama learned from The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial that British pop star Natasha Bedingfield and her businessman husband Matt Robinson have listed (and just about sold) an itty-bitty house on the border between the historic if gritty Lincoln Heights and Montecito Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Property records show they picked the place up out of foreclosure—presumably as an investment—in January 2011 for just $78,000.
Rich people and real estate snobs will probably make a kerfuffle about how the Montecito Heights and Lincoln Heights are the goddamn ghetto—they're just east of downtown and Dodger Stadium and about 1.5 miles from the inner city campus of USC. And maybe they are lesser savory zip codes. What does Your Mama know never having actually stepped well shod foot in that particular 'hood? Whatever the economic and security realities of Lincoln and Montecito Heights today they is often cited as among the oldest neighborhoods in Lala Land where, once upon a time in the mid-1800s, wealthy Angelenos built large and elaborate Victorian mansions. Naturally, hipster house flippers have pegged the 'hood' as the next Highland Park or Mount Washington in their not entirely futile or successful attempts to upgrade and gentrify the area.
Anyhoo, listing details available online show the 1,380 square foot bungalow was was originally built in 1914 and completely renovated by Miter Robinson and Miz Bedingfield with all new systems, kitchen and bathrooms. The couple, who also own a much more celebrity-esque style house in the gated Laughlin Park enclave in L.A.'s famous-friendly Los Feliz area, flipped the ho-hum house back on the market in December (2011) with an asking price of $377,000. By early 2012 the price had dropped to $329,900 and—strangely—appears to have been in escrow since April 2012.
The fuzzy listing photos show an open plan main living space with hardwood floors, white walls and butcher block counter tops in the appliance-free kitchen. The bathrooms are finished with renter-grade fixtures—at least one has one of those horrid molded plastic shower enclosures—and both bedrooms appear to have pale beige wall-to-wall carpeting. The master bedroom is located on the lower level along with laundry facilities and small, tile-floored office area.
Listing details also indicate Miz Bedingfield and Mister Robinson were willing to lease the two bedroom and two bathroom hillside house for $1,895 per month, arrange for a lease to purchase situation and/or were possibly willing to carry the loan on the property.
listing photos: Rodeo Realty
Week End Wrap Up (03.15.13): 778 Park Avenue
The brutally swank building was originally designed by much lauded and applauded pre-war architect Rosario Candela, a man who really understood how filthy rich folks wanted to lived when they moved from mansions to urban apartment houses. Howevuh, hunties, most of the drop dead swellegant original architectural details Mister Candela is known for—think wedding cake moldings, thick window surrounds, pedimented doorways—have been mostly if not entirely stripped from the apartment in favor of a more austere environment that compliment's the sellers' rather impressive collection of name brand contemporary art.
While the apartment is undeniably spectacular and, generally speaking, remarkably and efficiently laid out it lacks for closet space—particularly in the master bedroom—and there does not appear to be a powder room. Guests who are unable to hold their water are, then, forced to traipse through one of the bedrooms or—heaven forfend—weave their way deep into the service quarters to use the staff bathroom.
Listing details indicate the apartment has been in the same family for 70 years and our brief and unscientific research indicates that, until her death at 99 earlier this year, the sumptuous if dated spread was owned by fairly low profile pulp and paper heiress, arts and culture patroness and generous philanthropist Celeste Gottesman Bartos and her second husband, architect Armand Phillip Bartos, who predeceased her by about seven years. Mister Bartos is best known, according to his January 2006 obit in the New York Times, as being (partially) responsible for the Shrine of the Book building "at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem built to house the Dead Sea Scrolls and other ancient manuscripts."
In addition to their art-filled Park Avenue apartment Mister and Missus Bartos maintained a supremely located 3.68 acre spread on Georgica Cove in East Hampton, a walled and gated compound in Santa Fe, N.M., and a villa at Round Hill, Jamaica.
Speaking of Santa Fe—as an unrelated aside—have y'all seen any of the few photos of the super-minimal equestrian and residential complex that Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed for smoldering fashion world guru Tom Ford on his 24,000 acre ranch outside Santa Fe? Have mercy. The severe, uber-contemporary style will not appeal to anybody with a an architectural yen for the traditional but, holy damn hell butter beans, it's an architectural tour de force to be sure.
listing photos and floor plan: Sotheby's International Realty
Week End Wrap Up (03.15.13): Katy Perry
So, it comes as no surprise then that celebrity gossip juggernaut TMZ reported this week that otherwise unidentified "real estate sources" told them that Miss Perry would liked to have quietly sold the 8,835 square foot 1920s Mediterranean in an off-market deal for close to eight million clams. Alas, despite being shopped around off market and toured by a handful of qualified buyers—including, it was tattled to Your Mama, to at least one famously real estate obsessed actor—the 7 bedroom and 9 bathroom residence remains a costly high maintenance albatross around Miss Perry's real estate neck.
The folks at TMZ went on to report that ex-Missus Brand is getting increasingly antsy and actually plans to foist the Laurel Canyon crib on the open market in two weeks and that the asking price will be in the "mid 7s." TMZ's snitch went on to say that Miss Perry might be willing to sell the property in the high six millions if someone would just offer it. One of Your Mama's better connected celebrity real estate canaries told us not too long ago she might even be willing to take even less, something closer to a break even point, but that's just some real estate rumor and gossip that you did not hear from Your Mama.
aerial photo: Pacific Coast News
Week End Wrap Up (03.15.13): Patricia Heaton
LOCATION: Toluca Lake, CA
PRICE: $5,400,000
SIZE: 7,649 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The long-legged gal at Trulia Luxe Living reported this week that sit-com queen Patricia Heaton (The Middle, Everybody Loves Raymond) has her huge and historic 8,400 square foot Elmer Grey-designed mansion on two adjacent lots in L.A.'s hoity-toity Hancock Park 'hood in escrow (for an unknown price) and has already purchased her next home, a faux-Tuscan villa in the poshest pocket of the L.A.'s affluent Toluca Lake community.
Miz Heaton and her husband David Hunt paid $5,400,000 for the the walled and gated residence that sits on .75 landscaped acres, was originally built in 1998 and measures 7,649 square feet. Interestingly that's about 800 square feet smaller than the family's previous residence in Hancock Park, not counting the additional living space/media room they had above garage.
Property records Your Mama peeped show the seller was Francis von Zerneck, the Emmy nominated actor/director/writer son of Emmy nominated t.v. movie producer Frank von Zerneck and B-movie actress Julie Mannix (Portrait of a Stripper, Flatbed Annie & Sweetiepie: Lady Truckers, Sharon: Portrait of a Mistress).
Listing details describe the property rather grandiloquently as "One of the most important estate to ever come on the market in Toluca Lake." We don't know about that but we do know that the bulky, ochre-colored two story abode has five bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, garage parking for four cars and at least three fireplaces. Main living spaces include formal living and dining rooms, a library/office and a well equipped but stylistically banal chef-friendly center island kitchen with breakfast room and adjoining family room. In addition to the main staircase in the double-height impress-the-guests double-height entrance hall, an elevator whisks the lazy and/or the infirm between the home's two floors.
The deep back yard has expansive balustrade bordered dining and entertaining terraces, "park-like grounds, a heated swimming pool, spa and poolside cabana.
So, children, did Miz Heaton and Mister Hunt make a good real estate trade? Discuss...
listing photos: Coldwell Banker
Week End Wrap Up (03.15.13): Chelsea Clinton
According to the lady property gossip at the New York Post former first daughter Chelsea Clinton and her hedge fund starting husband Marc Mezvinsky have signed on the dotted line to purchase a sprawling $10,500,000 condo crib at The Whitman, a not-yet-finished boutique building in Manhattan's Flatiron District.
The $12,255 per month in taxes and common charges will help to cover costs for the full time doormen, refrigerated package room and residents' only fitness facility.
The Clinton-Mezvinsky couple already own a smaller, 19,22 square foot 10th floor apartment in the neighborhood that property records show Mister Mezvinsky scooped up in early 2008, before they were married, for exactly $4,000,000. Your Mama assumes the young, rich, ambitious and well-connected couple will sell the apartment at some point but as far as we know it's not currently on the market.
listing photos and floor plan: Douglas Elliman
Jamie Kennedy Lists Modern Ranch in Los Feliz
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,899,000
SIZE: 2,342 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Comedian Jamie Kennedy has (re-)listed his contemporized ranch house in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles on the market at a substantial loss with an asking price of $1,899,000.
Property records (and previous reports) reveal that Mister Kennedy purchased the property in July 2007 for $2,150,000. A few clicks and clacks of the well-worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that even if his handsome real estate agent snags a full price sale—don't laugh, children, it could happen—Mister Kennedy is facing a $251,000 hit to his man purse not counting carrying costs, improvements and real estate fees.
Current listing information shows the double-gated and fully remodeled single story ranch house was originally built in 1958 and has four bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms (plus a full bathroom in the pool cabana) in 2,342 square feet of sleek interior space.
A glassy rear façade spills out to a resort-style backyard with multiple fire pits and water features, a built-in barbecue/outdoor kitchen and an elevated spa connected to the swimming pool by a river-like water channel. One of the more—ahem—interesting features is an all-glass above ground koi pond, an eye popping but utterly impractical and difficult situation to maintain—Your Mama imagines—without a part time koi pond cleaner on the payroll.
Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Mister Kennedy plans to decamp to downtown where his production company is located but we don't have any specifics on the wheres and how muches as regards to where exactly he plans to live.
listing photos: Keller Williams / Studio City
Cheryl Tiegs Lists Balinese Style House in Bel Air
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $12,000,000
SIZE: 4,770 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: America's first supermodel (and not so successful contestant on Celebrity Apprentice a few seasons ago) Cheryl Tiegs has put her long time home in Los Angeles's prime East Gate Bel Air area on the market with a $12,000,000 price tag.
Property records show Miz Tiegs purchased the 1.43 acre property in May 1996 for an unknown amount of dough. Current listing information shows the 4,770 square foot house has a total of four bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms including a staff room, guest house (with bathroom) and a roomy master bedroom with fireplace, sitting area and spa-style bathroom slathered in sea grass and what listing details ambiguously call "rich woodwork."
The house was all did up and done over in haute Balinese inspired style by effervescently flamboyant Million Dollar Decorator Martyn Lawrence Bullard. The main living area have dark wood floors, a soaring vaulted ceiling held aloft by sturdy carved wood columns and long banks and wood-framed sliding glass doors that suck up the view of the surrounding thicket of mature tropical landscaping.
Listing details go on to reveal there's a wine cellar and to describe the eat-in kitchen as "spacious." And it is spacious with a butcher block topped Subaru-sized center island and industrial style appliances but it's also a bit wacky and dated with a low textured ceiling and a high gloss cream and black tiled floor.
Thee lushly planted grounds include a long gated driveway, a good-sized motor court, three car attached garage in the back, a kidney-shaped swimming pool and various meandering pathways, towering palms and several fountains.
listing photos: Rodeo Realty
Showbiz Bigwig Mike Medavoy Flipping Out Again
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $7,998,000
SIZE: 5,437 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: In 2007 Tinseltown super producer Mike Medavoy and his wife Irena slapped a ludicrously optimistic $23,500,000 price tag on their nearly 11,000 square foot house in the guard-gated Beverly Park community that sold July 2009 for $12,500,000.
A few months later, in September 2009, the Hollywood power player and is charity-minded lady downsized to an approximately 6,200 square foot house in the ever-so-trendy Trousdale Estates neighborhood in Beverly Hills for which they paid $5,850,000. However, Mister and Missus Medavoy soon caught a classic case of The Real Estate Fickle and, in June 2010, flipped the low-slung four bedroom and seven bathroom house back on the market with an asking price of $7,495,000. Property records show the house sold very quickly to a Canadian corporate concern for $7,500,000.
The following April (2011) Mister and Missus Medavoy plunked down $6,000,000 dollars for a 5,437 square foot architectural pastiche of a house in prime East Gate Bel Air that Your Mama will call it a faux-Tuscan Renaissance Revival style villa due to a lack of more discernible or specific vernacular.
The—ahem—villa overlooks the impossibly exclusive Bel-Air Country Club where, as per the country club's website, gentlemen members and their male guests are not allowed to wear "Bermuda or walking shorts, jeans or denims of any color, tank tops, cutoffs, swimwear, football jerseys, or any type of shirt with printed phrases and warm-up suits are not permitted."
Anyhoo, less than two years later, in late February 2013, the itchy-footed Medavoys heaved their Bel Air house back on the market with a $7,998,000 price tag. It might seem ludicrous to some of the children that Mister and Missus Medavoy would slap an asking price on the house 33% higher than they paid for the place less than two years before but they did undertake an extensive and costly renovation of the property and—bully for them—within two weeks the property was put into escrow with an unknown buyer at an unknown price.
Incidentally, the property had been owned since at least the mid-1990s by Jon Peters—another Tinseltown super producer—who sold the house to arts and culture patroness Brindell Roberts Gottlieb in March 2008 for $8,200,000. Miz Gottlieb, bless her real estate heart, lost a $2.2 million bundle when she sold the house to Mister and Missus Medavoy for just six million bucks.*
Listing detials show the two story house was originally built in 1950, sits on .85 gated acres, measures 5,437 square feet and has a total of four bedrooms and five bathrooms including a "romantic" master suite with high ceiling and dual bathrooms.
The formal living room is roomy enough to comfortably accommodate a grand piano and has wood floors, a vaulted exposed beam wood ceiling, hulking stone fireplace and at least four sets of French doors that open to a long and wide, slate-tiled city view terrace. The vaulted ceiling continues over the formal dining room with a quartet of sky-lights that flood the room with light all day long. There aren't any listing photos of the kitchen but listing details call it a "Fabulous country open kitchen with eat-in breakfast room."
Other less formal spaces include a gallery lined with windows and built-in bookshelves, a fully carpeted den/office and an also fully carpeted over-sized family room filled with roll-armed upholstered sofas and chairs and a truckload of books, photographs, accolades and other movie industry memorabilia form Mister Medavoy's nearly 50 years in Da Movie Bizness.
The lower level—where some if not all of the bedrooms are located as far as Your Mama can tell—opens to a basket weave pattern red brick terrace and wedge-shaped deck that surrounds the bullet-shaped swimming pool. The terraced and fully landscaped grounds include tended gardens and walkways, narrow strips of flat lawns and a lighted sport court that overlooks the once exquisite UCLA-owned Hannah Carter Japanese Garden.***
The immediate area where this house is located is chock full of large estates owned by all sorts of wicked-rich people who include apparel mogul Serge Azria—who paid $21 million for his 12 bathroom house in April 2011, billionaire investor Tom Gores, financier Michael Doumani, wealthy widow Bren Simon who once put her 20,000-ish square foot mansion on the market for $50,000,000 but has since reduced it several times the price to its current $29,900,000.
*Mister Medavoy's has had a hand in producing, literally, hundreds of feature films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Rocky and Annie Hall, all of which earned best picture Oscars in the mid-1970s. Since then he produced through a variety of companies (Orion, TriStar and Phoenix) a slew of money maker and award winners including The Terminator (and Terminator II), Dances with Wolves, The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepless in Seattle, Hook, The People vs. Larry Flint, The Thin Red Line, Shutter Island and the 2010 mega hit Black Swan. According to his extensive and impressive resume on the Internet Movie Data Base, Mister Medavoy has more than half a dozen projects from several different genres (Sci-Fi, Horror, Drama etc.) in various stages of filming and development.
**As far as we can tell from a look-see at the property records, Miz Roberts Gottlieb still also owns the nearly 11,000 square foot house on 2.34 acres immediately next door that she and her deceased husband Milton—a former economics professor turned real estate developer—have owned since the late 1990s.
***The 1.5 acre Kyoto-style hillside garden, designed in the late 50s and early 60s by Nagao Sakurai, was donated to UCLA in the mid-60s. Although they had agreed to maintain the garden in perpetuity, in early 2012 the university removed all the valuable art objects and planned to sell the garden citing prohibitively high maintenance costs, deferred maintenance issues and a lack of attendance/revenue related to the strictly limited parking. Controversy ensued and garden preservationists were relieved when the L.A. Superior Court granted a temporary injunction that prohibits the sale of the garden. A trial is set for May (2013) to determine the long-term fate of the stored garden. The university also listed the adjacent house—the so-called Carter House—in February 2012 for $9 million but it was de-listed five months later and has not returned to the (open) market.
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills South
