Rapper in Tune With Bay Area

Rap singer HAMMER has been building an 11,000-square-foot residence in the San Francisco Bay Area and just got the go-ahead to build a 10,000-square-foot expansion for a media center and bowling alley.

The Grammy winner, who was a batboy for the Oakland A’s before he became a superstar with such songs as “U Can’t Touch This” and “Pray,” appeared earlier this month in the CBS Special “Hammer From the Heart” and is now on a world tour.

He also has a horse, Dance Floor, scheduled to run in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Hammer and his family own about 20 race horses.

Hammer, who was born Stanley Kirk Burrell in 1962, grew up in a tough Oakland neighborhood, where he became The Holy Ghost Boy--a local rapper with a religious message--before he hit the top of the pop charts as M.C. Hammer. He recently dropped the initials.

He is building his home just south of Oakland, in the East Bay suburb of Fremont, where he has lived for about six years. The recording studios for Bust It Productions, Hammer’s Oakland-based management and production company, are also in Fremont.

The 12-acre site where he is building has a backdrop of mountains and a view across San Francisco Bay. Hammer bought the property several years ago. It came with an approved plan for a house with three bedrooms, maid’s quarters, a living/entertainment area and reflecting pool.

“The home is a takeoff on a Greek Revival, but it’s very sleek,” said city planner Michael Johnson. “It’s 12 to 13 feet high with a flat top but with Grecian columns, so it has Greek elements but looks modern.”

The main part of the one-story residence is expected to be completed in August or September. The expansion will be a separate structure, connected to the main house by a breezeway.

The media center, in the expansion, will have a movie theater and a recording studio. Besides the bowling alley, there will be basketball and tennis courts in the building.

Hammer, who will live in the home with his wife and young daughter, is also planning to build a sports field, for softball and football, and a swimming pool with a waterfall.

DANNY GLOVER, star of the “Grand Canyon” and “Lethal Weapon” films, is planning to move in June into a San Francisco house he has spent a year remodeling, sources say.

The six-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot Victorian, which Glover bought a couple of years ago for $1 million, was built near the turn of the century for Alma Spreckles of the sugar family.

(The Spreckles family’s main house in San Francisco was in the Pacific Heights area of town. That house was for sale a couple of years ago at $13.5 million and sold for about $6 million, minus a vacant lot, to novelist Danielle Steele.)

Glover’s home was being used as a bed-and-breakfast when he bought it.

In the 1960s, its third-floor ballroom housed a recording studio, which was used by the Grateful Dead and New Riders of the Purple Sage. In the 1970s, the house was painted to look like a Tibetan temple to complement its owner’s Tibetan store, elsewhere in the city.

Glover, who is from the Bay Area, has been living near the house with his wife and daughter in a pair of flats he has owned for years. His wife, Ashake, owns the Bomani Galleries on Post Street.

ROBIN WILLIAMS--who had a busy year last year making “Hook,” “The Fisher King” and “Dead Again”--is refurbishing a house he bought last summer for a bit more than $3 million in the Seacliff beach area of San Francisco.

Williams already had a home in Seacliff when he purchased the one he is rehabbing, but he wanted more privacy, a source said, “so he bought the property and is putting tons of money into making it secure, with a wall all around it.”

Built in 1923, the Mediterranean-style, 8,000-square-foot house is on a knoll and has a beautiful view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County, other sources said. “He likes to watch the kids surf,” one of the sources added.

The three-story house, which has a servants’ wing and a bay view from every room, was sold by TRI Realty, San Francisco, other sources said.

Attorney MELVIN BELLI’S former home of about 16 years--a 9,000-square-foot mansion--has been sold to San Francisco entrepreneur Michael McGuire, who owns an airline food business.

The San Francisco home, in the Gold Coast area of Pacific Heights, sold for about $6 million and included a real estate trade, said sources not involved in the deal.

The estate was sold by Belli’s ex-wife, Lia. The Bellis were divorced about three years ago.

The home, which had been listed at $7.5 million, has five bedrooms and four maids’ rooms, a swimming pool and a spa. It was built in 1927 for Richard Hiene, an expansion-bridge builder who helped construct the Golden Gate Bridge.

The property had been listed by Bill Doyle at Jon Douglas Co., San Francisco.