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?
Thursday, October 4, 2012
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
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
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
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