BUYER: Roman AbramovichLOCATION: Gouverneur Bay, Saint Barthélemy, French West Indies
PRICE: €61,200,000
SIZE: 70 acres
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen children, Your Mama knows we're a little late to the publicity fair on this one but since Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are just around the corner and all the international jet-setters are preparing to pack their Louis Vuittons for their annual holiday trip to super-swank St. Barts, Your Mama thought it might be fun to have a(nother) little look-see at the St. Barts estate Russian multi-billionaire Roman Abramovich recently snatched up for a reported €61,200,000. A quick consult with Your Mama's currency conversion contraption indicates that amounts to a booty clenching $92,106,000 at today's rates. The figure reportedly beats the previous record for highest amount ever paid for a property in the Caribbean by three times.
The property, known as the Gouverneur Bay Estate, occupies land formerly owned by David Rockefeller and was sold by e-commerce software tycoon Jeet Singh. Designed like a Balinese village, the 70-acre estate spills gently down a lushly landscaped hillside and stretches approximately 1,000 feet along Gouverneur's Beach, one of St. Barts' better known nood beaches. Not topless, chickens, nood as in birthday suit nekkid with all the naughty bits on display.
The property's former owner, Mister Singh, apparently leased the property out to wildly rich winter time sun seekers because Your Mama managed to dig us up an old rental listing for the property which shows it went for $100,000 in the off-season and $150,000 during the high-season. That's per week puppies, per week.
Anyhoo, according to the rental listing, each of the many Balinese style bungalows are constructed of tropical timbers such as Guyanese teak, mahogany and green heart. The dee-luxe but barefoot casual estate includes 4 Balinese-style bedroom bungalows and a total of 8.5 poopers. The owner's suite, well situated for soo-preem privacy, encompasses a bay view bedroom with a wrap around veranda, a behemoth–and air-conditioned–bathroom with a free standing soaking tub, a walk in closet commodious enough keep all the beaded and and flowy tunics and strappy sandals Mister Abramovich's ladee-friend Daria Zhukova can buy, an outdoor shower for two, and a private swimming pool with a rock waterfall and several boulders sitting right in the middle of the damn thing.
In addition to the bedroom bungalows, the estate includes a catering kitchen for large parties, a main living room salon called the Lizard Lounge, and an entertainment complex that includes a swimming pool with in-water speakers and a swim-up bar, a fully equipped kitchen and bbq area, an outdoor dining room, a couple of shade providing pavilions, and an outdoor stage and cinema for watching movies under the stars. There are also two Har-Tru tennis courts for the sporty types as well as a caretaker's cottage and an area for garages and mechanical equipment.
According to a snippet in Page Six of today's New York Post, Mister Abramovich and his very female companion Daria–who is preggers with the billionaire's sixth baby–are planning a holiday party for as many as 250 people. The only question, apparently, is whether they'll be hosting the shindig at one of the islands finer restaurants or at his new estate overlooking Gouverneur's Beach. Your Mama knows which location we'd prefer, but alas, we'd bet our long bodied bitches Linda and Beverly we won't be invited to the billionaire's beach bash.
Mister Abramovich is certainly no stranger to international real estate gossip columns or lavish living. In addition to his house in Moscow–about which Your Mama knows not a thing–he is in the process of combining two townhouses into one 30,000 square foot beast of a mansion on London's Lowndes Square in the natty and nabobish Knightsbridge area. Plans show the house will have 5 stories above ground, another three below, 8 family and guest bedrooms, an indoor swimming pool and four flats for staff above the multi-car garage.
The jet-setting oligarch also owns the Chateau de la Croë, a Cap d'Antibes villa once owned by the exiled Duke of Windsor as well as two high-priced properties in Snowmass Village, CO. First he dumped millions on a 5,600 square foot ski-in, ski-out house and a few months later dropped and staggering $36,375,000 for Wildcat Ridge, a 200-acre ranch with a 14,300 square foot, 11 bedroom residence that he bought lock, stock and fully furnished including a leather and mink chair that we're pretty sure the peeps at PETA would no likey.
Based on previous reports, Your Mama has learned the big living billionaire flies around the world on a custom fitted Boeing 767 wide-body jet and bobs along in international waters on one of his four boats. There is the 163-foot Sussurro, the Ecstasea, which stretches 282 feet, and the Pelorus, a mind-bending 377 feet long. However, it's his recently completed but yet to be delivered Blohm & Voss built boat, the Eclipse, that really takes the yachting cake and makes Your Mama pee in our pants a little from financial flabbergast. Mister Abramovich's new boat, a ship really, is rumored to measure a staggering 557 feet long and feature bullet proof glass, a personal submarine, a swimming pool, a sci-fi sounding anti-photo laser shield, a crew of 70, and not one but two helipads. That's certainly excessive by any standard, but let's be honest butter beans, if you're a wildly rich Russian oligarch with a boat almost twice as long as a damn football field, it behooves you to have someplace to land your helicopter and someplace to land the helicopter of a visiting bidness baron.
Mister Abramovich's profligate ways don't stop with his hundreds of millions spent real estate, boats and planes. He's also a prolific contemporary art collector who famously spent well over $100,000,000 in two days on two pieces of art in May of 2008 when his capacious wealth was at its very apex. One day he forked over $33,641,000 for Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping and $86,281,000 for Francis Bacon's mythological minded Triptych, 1976.
Your Mama gets breathless and goes weak in the knees when we think of the hundreds of millions of dollars Mister Abramovich spends on his insanely luxuriously lifestyle and we require a nerve pill and a dark padded room when we ponder the yearly costs for the upkeep, staffing and taxes of all his many toys and homes. While he's certainly free to spend his billions any way he sees fit, Your Mama can't help but think of all the people who have so little at holiday times and genuinely hope Mister Abramovich uses a wee sliver of his titanic cash reserves to spread a little bit of his private cornucopia around to those far less privileged than he and his soon to be baby momma. We also hope he invites us for a short cruise on the Eclipse, but we'd surely suffocate holding our breath for that invitation.
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