Santa Fe Brings Home the Stars

CAROL BURNETT, whose TV special “The Carol Burnett Show: A Reunion” will be broadcast at 9 tonight on CBS, has put her Honolulu house on the market at $3.45 million and is renting in Santa Fe, where she plans to build a home.

Burnett, whose production company has a contract with CBS to develop such projects as her special tonight, has been called “the queen of TV revue comedy” because of her series, which won 22 Emmys while airing from 1966 to 1977.

“I’m not giving up the islands entirely,” she said. “It’s just that a lot of my dear friends (and relatives) have moved to the Mainland, and to sit on the lanai of my house without my buddies is not my idea of fun.

“I might wind up with an apartment or something smaller in the islands. I have been going to Hawaii for 25 years now, and Kalola, the name of my production company, means Carol in Hawaiian.

“So, I love Hawaii, but I also love Santa Fe very much.”

She discovered that after visiting friends who relocated there three years ago. “I love the fact that it has four seasons, but it isn’t a wet cold. I was just there, and it was like a fairyland,” she said.

“And oddly enough, Santa Fe is a lot like Hawaii. It has a quality I liken to the Aloha spirit--the same feeling of peacefulness . . . and the people are so friendly. It’s a small town, but in a good sense.

“I’ll still have my main digs in Los Angeles,” she said. A 6,000-square-foot townhouse in Century City was built for her about two years ago.

The actress/comedienne is thinking about building a home in Santa Fe, though she hasn’t yet had any plans drawn. And she will co-star Feb. 2-7 with Charlton Heston in “Love Letters” in seven performances at the New Mexico Repertory Theatre in Santa Fe. “It’s my fantasy to work where I live,” she said.

Her Honolulu home has five bedrooms and five baths in about 4,000 square feet. Built in 1981 but completely refurbished after Burnett bought it in 1987, the house has an ocean view and is in a gated community, near the beaches of Diamond Head.

The home, including land and furnishings, is listed with Patrick O’Neill, at Coldwell Banker, Honolulu.

ALI MacGRAW, who decorated the Santa Fe-style Malibu Adobe Restaurant, has been decorating the real thing: a Santa Fe house that she bought a couple of years ago and has been working on ever since.

The actress co-stars with James Arness and James Brolin in the upcoming CBS movie “Gunsmoke: The Long Ride,” which was filmed entirely in the New Mexico capital.

She lives in the part of Santa Fe known as Tesuque, where such celebrities as Val Kilmer, Ted Danson and Oprah Winfrey also own properties. Actor Brian Dennehy lives in another area of town.

“(MacGraw) has been spending so much time in Santa Fe, decorating her home there herself,” a spokesman for the actress said. Rod Gesten, a Santa Fe architect/builder, also has been working on MacGraw’s Santa Fe home since she acquired it.

“We first added about 400 square feet--a master suite and dining room--to the original, 1,000-square-foot house, which was built about 12 years ago,” he said. “Then we readdressed the entry and added a bell tower and a hot tub, which is over a new deck that has a treehouse effect.”

He completed a framed, stucco garage that looks as if it is an extension of a rock wall and tore down some old stables. “Now we’re adding a studio . . . that will be a workshop with alcoves for different functions when it’s completed in mid-March,” he said. The home, on about five acres, is pueblo in style.

MacGraw, who lived in Malibu for many years, moved in 1989 to Pacific Palisades, where she still maintains a residence.

The late JIM HENSON, who created Kermit the Frog and the other Muppets, owned 313 acres in Santa Fe that are now for sale at slightly more than $4 million.

“It’s an old grazing area with good terrain and nice views, overlooking a golf course,” said listing agent David Woodard of French & French Fine Properties in Santa Fe.

“I met Jim through a mutual friend from Palm Beach who suggested that we get together to do a project here,” Woodard said. “Jim was an incredibly creative person, and he could envision this property, with its views and valleys, as a private resort or a retreat for three or four homes or compounds, which nobody could see because of the topography.” The land also would accommodate some private horseback riding trails.

Henson died in New York of pneumonia at age 53 in May, 1990.

California retail king FRED SEGAL, whose empire includes complexes on Melrose and in Santa Monica, is renovating a Santa Fe-area ranch, which is a federal historic landmark, called Los Luceros.

“It’s an enormous responsibility, as I perceive it,” said Segal of the 140-acre ranch, which was in a dilapidated state when he bought it last year for nearly $1 million, according to other sources.

There are four adobes, a 300-year-old Catholic church and a 400-year-old, two-story colonial building on the ranch, which was a seat of government during the 1600s. “I’ve already renovated the adobes, and now I’m working on the land itself,” said Segal, who lives full time in a Santa Fe condo.

“There are thousands of apple trees, a lot of them dead. I’m cleaning those out and pruning others. Then I’m going to work on the cottonwood tree area and an area by the riverfront.”

Also known as a philanthropist and a peace activist, Segal plans to use the ranch as a peace park and place for underprivileged children to have day care “similar to our Malibu peace park,” he said.

He has a 140-acre peace park in Malibu, where he plans to build a Tibetan Buddhist temple. He also owns an 80-acre peace park in Ruidoso, N.M., where for 14 years, he has operated a summer and holiday camp for orphans and other underprivileged children.

JORDAN CRONENWETH, director of photography for the 1992 film “Final Analysis” as well as such movies as “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986) and “Blade Runner” (1982), and his wife, Shane, are planning to add another 2,000 square feet to the nearly 4,000-square-foot house they bought recently near Ali MacGraw’s home in Santa Fe.

The Cronenweths, who have also had a home in Los Angeles, bought an 18-year-old adobe on 5.5 acres for close to the asking price of $1.35 million. Pat French of French & French in Santa Fe handled both sides of the transaction.

The Cronenweths’ adobe has three bedrooms, a guest house, a sun room, walls 2 feet thick, and a portico or veranda 12 feet wide by 70 feet long. “We can sit out there and look at the Sangre de Cristo mountains and the Colorado Badlands,” Shane Cronenweth said.