Double the Space in Hancock Park
Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith have purchased the property next door to their Hancock Park home for about $1.3 million.
The site, quietly acquired a few months ago, and the couple’s existing home were both part of one estate until the 1950s, when the lot was split. Then a house was built on the site, which had been the estate’s garden.
The ranch-style house is about 4,000 square feet and is on one level except for a large room and a bath in an alcove under the high-pitched roof. The home also has five bedrooms and a knotty-pine paneled living room.
The couple’s two-lot property covers slightly more than an acre.
The main residence, which the actors bought in May 1999 for $4.2 million, has been described by a neighbor as “truly fantastic.” Built in 1925, the Mediterranean-style home, designed by architect Gordon Kaufman, is 15,000 square feet.
When purchased, it had nine bedrooms plus a ballroom, wine vault, pool, greenhouse and motor court. The actors renovated the house, eliminating some of the bedrooms and creating a music studio, sauna and gym.
Banderas, 40, and Griffith, 43, have been married since 1996.
Banderas, who won best film actor (“The 13th Warrior”) and best director (“Crazy in Alabama”) at the fifth annual American Latin Media Arts awards in April, co-starred in “Play It to the Bone” (1999) and “The Mask of Zorro” (1998).
Griffith, managing director and a partner of the Internet company One World Networks, starred in the movies “Cecil B. Demented,” released in August, “Crazy in Alabama” (1999) and “Another Day in Paradise” (1998).
Griffith was in the news in November when she spent eight days in a Marina del Rey rehab clinic to beat an addiction to prescription pills she was taking for a neck injury.
A dot-com entrepreneur from San Francisco has purchased an unfinished home in the Beverly Hills area for $14 million.
The 31,000-square-foot house, on 2.5 acres, has a large subterranean garage for parking six to 10 cars and a variety of amenities, which the buyer can choose to have completed, including a wine room, gym, home theater and playroom. The buyer also will add floor and counter-top finishes as well as landscaping. When completed, the home is expected to be worth $17.5 million or more.
The Venetian villa-style house has six family bedrooms, including a 4,000-square-foot master suite, and staff quarters with two bedrooms and a living room.
It is in the gate-guarded community of Beverly Park, overlooking Beverly Hills. One of the largest and newest celebrity enclaves, Beverly Park is nearing completion, and a newer development is in the works on a ridge to the east. Called Beverly Ridge Estates, it has 12 view lots on the market, each on a knoll, with prices starting at $2.4 million.
Brian Adler, developer of the home that the dot-com entrepreneur purchased, is also the developer of Beverly Park, and he is the real estate broker representing Beverly Ridge Estates.
Jeff Hyland of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, represented the buyer, sources said.
Emmy-winning writer Pamela K. Long and her husband, writer-producer Stephen J. Brackley, have purchased a 100-year-old, 425-acre working ranch in Santa Paula, where they plan to live and raise their draft horses.
The couple also put their Pacific Palisades home on the market at just under $3.5 million.
Long, writing supervisor and co-executive producer of MTV’s “Undressed,” was a former writer of the TV series “Christy” and the soaps “Guiding Light” and “One Life to Live.”
She was a creator of the ABC-TV series “Second Noah” (1995-97), for which she and Brackley also were writers and producers.
Brackley is an executive producer, with Long, of the PAX Network series “Twice in a Lifetime.”
Their Mediterranean-style home, in the Palisades Riviera area, was built in 1929. The house is believed to have been a home of producer Hal Roach, who teamed Laurel with Hardy and turned a group of child actors into “Our Gang.” Roach died at 100 in 1992 at his Bel-Air home.
Situated behind gates and a three-story wall of bamboo, the 6,200-square-foot Palisades house has a master suite plus three family bedrooms and a maid’s quarters. The home also has an indoor fountain, a great room with a fireplace, a trophy room with stained-glass windows, a wood-paneled library with a wet bar, a breakfast room, chauffeur quarters, wine cellar and pool.
Enzo Ricciardelli of Sotheby’s International Realty, Brentwood, has the listing and represented the couple in buying their ranch.
A 100-acre estate site has come on the market in Laguna Beach at $50 million.
The unimproved land is on a ridge with sweeping, unobstructed ocean views.
The property is owned by the family of Bahador Mahboubi, the chewing-gum king from Iran who prospered by buying Rodeo Drive real estate and building the posh Beverly Hills retail complex known as the Rodeo Collection.
Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson & Associates has the listing.
An Indian Wells home with 18 bedrooms and 27 baths in more than 28,000 square feet has come on the market at $15 million.
The home, on slightly more than two acres, was built in 1997. The owners made their fortune in an L.A.-based ambulance and medical transportation business.
Situated in a guard-gated community, the compound includes a main residence with a master suite plus five suites, each with a living room and two bedrooms. The main house also has a playroom, gym, billiards room, office, staff quarters, wine cellar and underground parking for 12 cars.
There are extensive outdoor entertaining facilities, with a commercial kitchen, a soda fountain, tennis court, hotel-size swimming pool, toddlers’ pool and spa. Two guest houses plus a three-bedroom home with a pool are also on the property. The buildings are linked by an 18-hole putting green.
Barry Sloane of Sotheby’s International Realty, Beverly Hills, has the listing.
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Pamela K. Long and Stephen J. Brackley
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