Keys and Beatz Close on Kravitz Penthouse

Back in late January and early February of 2010 it was widely rumored and much reported in all the celebrity real estate gossip columns that preggers Grammy winning singer/songwriter Alicia Keys and her babydaddy/fiancée, the ridiculously named music producer Swizz Beatz, were in the process of purchasing the downtown New York City penthouse apartment that musician Lenny Kravitz had been trying to unload since the dawn of time. And buy Mister Kravitz real estate albatross they did.

The StreetEasy folks show the 5,818 square foot doo-plex digs were last listed at $14,995,000 and the peeps at Property Shark show that in late February of 2010 preggers Miss Keys and Mister Beatz negotiated a substantial price reduction paying $12,750,000 for their new downtown digs located in the same boo-teek condo building in SoHo where Courtney Love once lived and irritated at least one of her neighbors with her I'm a rock star so I can act like a damn fool antics.

If the children recall, Mister Kravitz first listed the 5 bedroom, 7 pooper, and multi-terraced spread way back in 2002 and over the years the asking price soared to as high as $19,500,000 and dipped to as low as $12,000,000. Mister Kravitz's glammy crib was taken off and put back on the market more times than Your Mama cares to count, underwent at least one million dollar renovation courtesy of Mister Kravitz's eponymous design firm, and was reportedly leased out to a couple of high profile individuals including Academy Award winning Aussie actress Nicole Kidman and Oscar winning actor Denzel Washington.

In the early naughts when the Crosby Street building was being converted to condos, it was both touted and mocked in the press as a kind of celebrity dormitory with dee-luxe amenities such as an aromatherapy system in the lobby 24-hour concierge, a "smart" recycling system that automatically separates paper from plastic, and private wine cellars in the basement. Nowadays instead of famous folks it's filled with a bunch of Wall Street and big bizness types such as credit default swap swami Greg Lippmann, former Bear Stearns banker Mark Van Lith, private equity pasha Nathan Kornfeld, new media mogul Dan Pelson, and porcine homosexual bon vivant and restaurateur Laurence Isaacson whose published, Benjamin Noriega-Ortiz designed basement maisonette has been on and off the market for more then 4 years and is currently listed at $7,000,000. (Don't be fooled by previous reports that call his unit a penthouse, it's located on the ground floor and basement levels no matter how many times large livin' Mister Isaacson calls it a penthouse.)

In mid-June 2010, having closed and perhaps moved into her new SoHo spread, it was revealed that Soon to Be Missus Beatz listed her long time mansion in the leafy and upscale Long Island enclave of Syosset, NY with an asking price of $3,850,000. Although some reports show Soon to Be Missus Beatz paid $3,950,000 for her 15-room residence situated on 2.02 gated acres, property records pYour Mama accessed show she bought the 9,000+ square foot suburban sprawler in December of 2005 for $2,933,380.

Listing information shows Soon to Be Missus Beatz's two-story, vaguely chateau-esque style manse encompasses more than 9,000 square feet and includes bedrooms and 6.5 poopers, an old-school gallery with black and white checked marble floors, a curving staircase, 3 fireplaces, a pine paneled family room with built in wet bar, eat in kitchen, office, full basement, attic, 2 large motor courts, and a 3 car garage. The fully landscaped grounds are ringed with mature evergreens and include large lawns, a vast 2,000 square foot terrace off the back of the house, and a 50-foot long swimming pool, spa, and adjacent pool house.

Hair Honcho Sally Herschberger Lists Penthouse Pad

SELLER: Sally Hershberger
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $5,900,000
SIZE: 905 square feet, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: If the children will get into their mental time machines and go back to the spring of 2007, y'all may recall when scissor sister Sally Hershberger, the hair stylist to the rich and famous who will charge you an astonishing $800 just to cut your damn hair, unsuccessfully attempted to unload her Beverly Hills, CA home. Miss Hershberger, a gal Your Mama thinks of as the She-ra of the Shag, listed her 3 bedroom and 5 pooper contemporary crib in the Trousdale Estates neighborhood with an asking price of $6,500,000. Five months later, the Hershberger house was taken off the market without a price reduction and without a buyer.

Skipping forward to late June of 2010 and we learn from our prolific informant Hot Chocolate that Miss Hershberger has now listed her itty-bitty New York City penthouse apartment with a porcine asking price of $5,900,000. It certainly isn't unusual for a terraced penthouse pad in the West Village to carry a price tag of nearly six million clams. What isn't so common is that the penthouse Miss Hershberger hopes will pour five or six million smackers into her bank accounts measures less than 1,000 square feet and includes just 1 bedroom and 1 pooper.

Miss Hershberger, who comes from a substantial Kansas oil fortune, owns three eponymous salons including her home base on Los Angeles' La Cienega Boulevard, which happens to be located in the same contemporary building as maximalist decorator and shelter rag darling Kelly Wearstler's office. In New York, Miss Hershberger camps out in a second floor salon in the sadly over-developed Meatpacking District–may Florent rest in peace–that's wedged between the Alexander McQueen–may he also rest in peace–and Stella McCartney boo-teeks. She recently opened a second Manhattan outpost on the top two floors of a spectacular townhouse on E. 71st Street that presumably caters to the uppity Junior League and Ladees Who Lunch sets.

Property records show Miss Hershberger bought her downtown digs in August of 2001, paying $1,850,000 for the 905 square foot aerie located in a much desired pre-war Bing and Bing building. Technically, Miss Hershberger's penthouse is in the West Village but it's so damn close to the Meatpacking District that it may as well be in the Meatpacking District.

The children may find it interesting to know that this penthouse is not the only apartment Miss Hershberger has owned in the building. In November of 1998, records show she purchased a 1 bedroom unit on the 9th floor for $425,000 and sold it in June of 2001 for $790,000 to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's former Press Secretary Nina Blackwell and her huzband Mark Solomons who in turn sold it in August of 2007 for $1,850,000 to the family of San Francisco-based billionaire Ray Dolby.

Miss Hershberger is a ladee of taste and style and her wee penthouse reflects that bent. The small apartment is blessed with a generous but not large entrance hall. Opposite the front door, in front of a frosted panel of floor to ceiling glass, sits a pedestal topped with a gigantic spiky white crystal, a form echoed with the Verner Panton wall mirror constructed of a myriad of different sized pyramids. Miss Hershberger's nice, gay decorator also introduces a dead animal skin motif in the entry that, like the crystal, plays itself out repeatedly throughout the petite penthouse.

The corner living room has large casement windows that suck up the panoramic views and a set of casement French doors that open the room to the expansive wrap around terrace. There are dee-voon walnut floors, a vintage Vernor Panton capiz shell chandelier, a very expensive Arne Jacobson Egg Chair that we'd bet our pinky toes is the real deal, a vintage leather Paul Frankl armchair that easily cost as much as a decent used car, a black and white spotted cow skin rug, and a pair of fluffy sheepskin pillows that could probably double as a pet in a pinch. Hanging on the wall behind a petite mid-century modern table and chairs is a large abstract canvas by Joseph La Piana with a series of red, yellow and orange geometric forms placed on a white background that Your Mama thinks successfully reflects the spiky nature of the crystal in the entrance and, more importantly, would look a-may-zing in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's dining room.

The small but functional kitchen is open to the living room and is fitted with sleek, matte white and flat fronted cabinets, a baby 4-burner Viking range, 24" wide stainless steel Sub-Zero fridge and freezer, a large work island wrapped in steel and lit by a linear crystal chandelier–there's them crystals again–and a microwave that is, thank the lawd, mounted under the cabinets and off the counter top. There does not appear to be a dishwasher, which does not mean there isn't one, but sitting atop the work island is, we regret, a dreaded orchid plant. There really isn't anything wrong with an orchid plant per se, but they've become so cliche in real estate listing photos that it makes Your Mama cringe and cower with decorative annoyance every time we see one.

Miss Hershberger's corner bedroom has three casement windows that open out onto the terrace, a gitzy Ettore Sottsass tubular chandelier with a ring of turquoise accents at the top and bottom, another dead cow rug, a stool covered in zebra skin, a platform bed with linens the color of the the Dalai Lama's robes, and behind the bed a series of photographs of what appear to be spiritual leaders. The children will note the extensive collection of crystals on the bureau. Miss Hershberger appears to have a more than a touch of the New Age in her.

The wrap around terraces have both brick and narrow plank decking and rows of rectangular planters bulging with sea grass line and soften the perimeter. One section, where Miss Hershberger placed a couple of teak chaise lounges for sucking up the sun, has unobstructed views north towards the London Terrace apartment complex–where Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter once lived in a dee-vine doo-plex apartment–and the Empire State building. Another section, near the kitchen has a round table with four wire Saarinen Bertoia chairs with the seat pads. The chairs and pads cost well upwards of $600 apiece which means, according few flicks of the well worn beads of our bejeweled abacus, that Miss Hershberger's outdoor dining set cost her at least three grand.

Eagle eyed children will note that the actual apartment layout is somewhat altered from the floor plan included with listing and marketing materials. In the Hershberger penthouse, the kitchen has been opened up into the living/dining room and a kind of hallway from the foyer to the pooper has been created by eliminating the walk in closet that once opened into the bedroom. While it's never desirable to cut down on closet space in small Manhattan apartments, it's far more unacceptable to have guests wander through the bedroom in order to get to the pooper. It's unclear if the bedroom can be properly divided from the hallway but we'd be 12 kinds of flummoxed and flabbergasted if Miss Hershberger's smart architect did not include the option of closing off the bedroom from the hallway, otherwise it's a six million dollar studio apartment.

It does seem a rather optimistic to ask nearly six million bucks for a small 1 bedroom penthouse apartment but consider that in June of 2008 a smaller, 690 square foot doo-plex penthouse apartment with 1 bedroom, 2 poopers and 600 square feet of terraces sold for a blood curdling $5,250,000, an amount that according to StreetEasy comes in at a heart stopping $7,608 per square foot. With that as a barometer, at its current asking price of $5,900,000, Miss Hershberger's penthouse may be a bit of bargain for a deep pocketed buyer at just $6,519 per square foot.

In addition to her mid-century modern in Beverly Hills that she bought in January of 2004 for $2,400,000 and her pricey penthouse in New York, Miss Hershberger also own a weekend retreat in the Hamptons, natch. Property records show that in December of 1999 Miss Hershberger paid $930,000 for the waterfront retreat that's located in a less expensive area of East Hampton known as The Springs.

Weekend This and Thats

1.
Your Mama's a little late to the rodeo on this one, but in case y'all missed it, details about porn purveyor Bob Guccione's old Manhattan townhouse–bought by hedge hog Phil Falcone and his wife Lisa Maria for $49,000,000–are starting to seep out of the limestone.

Among other ridiculously dee-luxe amenities, the Falcone's 25,000+ square foot double-wide townhouse mansion will have two elevators–one for the staff, natch–a swimming pool, and a press room. No puppies, that's not a room for on-site publicity peeps, but a room in the basement where Lurleen the Laundress will spend her days and nights ironing sheets and working the stains our of the Falcone's napkins and undergarments.

Another tidbit about the townhouse that Your Mama found inneresting, is that one of Missus Falcone's two dressing rooms will include a wet bar just in case the ladee of the house feels like getting drunk while getting dressed. Lo-urhd knew we do sometimes.

2.
Brace yourselves butter beans because another "housewife" from The Real Housewives of New Jersey has hoisted her hideous home on the market.

Earlier this week a listing for too tan Teresa Giudice's church of conspicuous consumption popped up that showed her mansion listed at $3,999,999. Tee-tee subsequently tweeted that her mansion of marble is not for sale and the online listing has since vanished. Make of that what you will.

This time it's former stripper turned suburban soccer mom turned sex tape maker Danielle Staub. Miz Staub, a woman who comes off on her reality program as being about as stable as an earthquake, had her house on the market in the fall of 2009 for $1,495,000. It's now back on the market at with a hugely reduced asking price of $1,095,000.

Maybe Danielle and Tee-tee should consider going in together on an affordable two-family in Union City or something. Ugh.

3.
The deal is reportedly done on property developer Mohamed Hadid's insanely ginormous Bel Air mansion Le Belvedere. However he's being a bit cagey on the final sale price of the 10 bedroom and 14 pooper property telling the L.A. Times only that the buyer paid between fifty and $72,000,000.

Transaction records have yet to clear but while peeping and poking around the public property records this morning, Your Mama unexpectedly turned up an unexplained name on some recent records, that of a man named Sarp Turanligil. A quick search on the interweb indicates there is a man named Sarp Turanligil who is the chairman of Divan Hotels, a Turkish hotel group.

Listen puppies, Your Mama is not sure if the Mister Turanligil shown on the property records is the same Mister Turanligil of Divan Hotels. We're also not sure if Mister Turnaligil's name showing up in the property/title records is some sort of error, if he was an investor in the property, loaned Mister Hadid money, or if perhaps he's the deep pocketed buyer.

Basically we don't know nuthin' other than that name now appears on the property records. Time will tell and we shall see.

UPDATE: Records show the house transferred for fifty million clams.

4.
Although he may be living there all by his lonesome, the very contemporary Jupiter Island, FL home being built by bed hopping professional golfer Tiger Woods looks like it's nearing completion. Like his nearby neighbor Celine Dion's new Jupiter Island home/water park, Tiger's got two side by side swimming pools too.

Tiger's spread includes a 10,000 square foot main house and a 9,500 fitness facility that recent reports reveal will include an oxygen therapy room, whatever the hell that is.

5.
Legendary country crooner–and plastic surgery victim–Kenny Rogers has hoisted two Georgia mansions on the market. One beast of a house in the Buckhead area of Atlanta previously carried and asking price of $7,950,000 and is now listed at $5,900,000, and another, a kind of Polynesian paradise sort of place located just outside of Athens, is listed at $3,200,000.

6.
In other Hotlanta celebrity real estate news, actress/activist/fitness video maker/born again Christian Jane Fonda listed her Atlanta, GA loft condo a just over a month ago with an asking price of $4,500,000. Somebody must have hit her with the sensible stick because thanks to Georgia Justwantsyalltoknow Your Mama has learned that Miz Fonda Vadim Hayden Turner has slashed the price of her 4,700 square foot doo-plex by a whopping $2,000,000. The 3 bedroom and 3 pooper condo with it's bee-zar womb-like entrance hall is now listed at a far more reasonable $2,500,000.

Your Mama's west coast sources say that big, bad Barbarella has leased herself a dumpy 1 bedroom apartment in the star-studded Sierra Towers building in Los Angeles where her neighbors include other old-school divas such as Cher, Elton John and Joan Collins.