Hello Baby, Bye-Bye Condo

Oscar-winning actress JODIE FOSTER, who became a mother for the first time in July and produced “The Baby Dance” on Showtime last weekend, has listed a Woodland Hills condo that she has owned since 1980.

Foster, 35, bought the contemporary townhouse when she was a first-year student at Yale University, where she majored in literature and from which she graduated magna cum laude, sources say.

She lived in the townhouse off and on for years and was living there when she won her first best actress Oscar, for “The Accused” (1988). Foster now lives in another of her homes in the Los Angeles area.

She won her second Academy Award as best actress for “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991), and she is expected to reprise her role opposite Anthony Hopkins in a sequel.

She made her feature-film directorial debut with “Little Man Tate” (1991), in which she also starred. She last appeared on screen in the movie “Contact” (1997).

Foster was executive producer of “The Baby Dance,” a movie about surrogate motherhood co-starring Stockard Channing and Laura Dern, and she has said that she plans to direct a movie in the spring or next summer.

Her townhouse, which is on the market at $219,000, has two bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths in slightly more than 1,300 square feet. It has two fireplaces, one in the master bedroom and one in the living room.

The decor was described as “very contemporary.” It has black carpets and white walls.

Kay Cole of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co., Woodland Hills, has the listing.

Comedian-actor JOHN BYNER and his wife, dancer-actress ANNIE GAYBIS, have leased a Bunker Hill condo for three years. They recently moved to L.A. from Palm Springs.

The couple lived in the desert for about a year while he headlined “The Fabulous Palm Springs Follies.” He starred in the one-hour variety special “The Virtual Ed Sullivan Show” on UPN in May and plans to do more specials as the late Ed Sullivan, on whose TV show Byner appeared 17 times. Byner also plans to appear soon in Las Vegas and Reno, Gaybis said.

Byner, in his 50s, is known for his impersonations and such cartoon voices as Anthony Aardvark. He was host of the A&E; series “Comedy on the Road” for four seasons.

Gaybis will dance and perform as Manuelita in “Carmen,” starring Placido Domingo, when it opens the L.A. Opera season at the Music Center on Sept. 8. “I can walk to work,” she said. “Downtown L.A. is one of the best-kept secrets.”

They leased a unit in the 16-year-old Promenade, which was recently remodeled. “It’s a mid-rise where we are, but the city lights up like a jewelry box at night,” she said, “and we hardly need to use our air conditioning, because we’re on a hill and get a breeze.”

Their unit has walls of windows, a den-office and a bedroom. The building has a sauna and a spa as well as a market that is open until midnight, she said. “And I love that we are so close to the Museum of Contemporary Art and Angels Flight, which is so much fun to ride and only costs a quarter.”

The couple, married six years, lease their unit for about $1,500 a month. Byner also owns a 150-acre island in Fiji, which he bought in 1982, Gaybis said. “He has two single-family homes there plus a boathouse, a greenhouse and about 100 coconut trees.”

Former Los Angeles Times Editor SHELBY COFFEY III and his physician wife, Mary Lee, have put their La Can~ada Flintridge home on the market at $885,000.

The Coffeys had owned the five-bedroom 4,000-square-foot-plus home since he came to The Times in 1986. He left The Times in October and in June was named executive vice president of ABC News in New York City, where the couple now lives a block from his office.

“It was a wonderful house, and we really enjoyed living there,” he said of his La Can~ada Flintridge home, which was built in 1963 and has a library, playroom, atrium, pool and golf-course views.

“Looking out at the golf course, I felt as if I had a great big yard but didn’t have to mow it,” he quipped.

Fran Vernon and Rowena Emmett of MacGregor Realty, La Canada Flintridge, have the listing.

Emmy-winning director-producer JOSEPH SARGENT and his wife, Carolyn, have sold their Victorian home of 25 years on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu for close to its $4-million asking price and bought a contemporary house in Paradise Cove for about $1.3 million, sources say.

Carolyn Sargent, a former actress, founded the nonprofit Free Arts for Abused Children and helped start Deaf West Theater. The couple sold the older home, which they designed and built on a two-acre bluff, and bought a newly built five-bedroom house with a pool and spa. Their former home has a four-bedroom main house and two-bedroom guest cottage plus horse facilities.

The Sargents decided to buy a smaller home because he is on the road so much. During the last five years, they spent less than six months in their Malibu home and at their Telluride because of his location shoots, she said.

Sargent went to Georgia to direct his Emmy-winning HBO movie “Miss Evers’ Boys,” to South Africa for Showtime’s “Mandela and De Klerk” and to Buddapest for NBC’s “Crime and Punishment,” scheduled to air in the fall.

Stephanie Raskin of Asher Dann & Associates, a division of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co. in Beverly Hills, and Madelyn Gonzalez of Fred Sands Realtors, Malibu, had the listing on the Victorian house and represented the Sargents in buying their new home, listed by Diane Everett and Paul Grisanti of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co.

Documentary filmmakers GARY and SARAH LEGON (“James Dean: A Portrait,” the Disney Channel, 1995) have listed their Hollywood Hills home at $649,000.

“We have traveled the world during the past 25 years, and our [filming] equipment is getting heavy,” he said.

The couple started a new business, the Road Best Traveled, through which they plan to take two to eight people at a time touring in Europe.

“We have a pied-a-terre in the south of France that we’ll use as our base,” he said, and they plan to keep a small home in the San Francisco area. “After 21 years in this house, we want to push on to the next adventure,” he said.

Their 2,285-square-foot home, which he describes as “an artist’s retreat in redwood, glass and concrete,” has two bedrooms and two fireplaces plus a one-bedroom studio. Built in the ‘20s, the house was owned for some years by actress-director Ida Lupino, who used it as a weekend retreat. Six years ago, the Legons added on a hexagon-shaped bedroom suite.

Cissy Wellman of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co., Brentwood and Studio City, has the listing.

A Bel-Air home built by MADELYN FIORITO JONES, widow of the late big-band leader Ted Fiorito, has been sold in the mid-$5 million range to Jack Roth, president of Admarketing Inc., a large local ad agency, sources say. Roth also has a home in Malibu.

The 10,000-square-foot Bel-Air house is on a four-acre promontory with a tennis court and pool. Fiorito Jones built the house, with its floor-to-ceiling glass walls, 12 years ago.

Roth was represented by Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson & Associates, and the house was listed by Joyce Rey and Cecelia Waeschle of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills.