LOCATION: Los Angeles (Bel Air), CA
PRICE: $27,500,000
SIZE: 10,616 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Paramount chieftain and all-around Showbiz power player Brad Grey and his second wife, Cassandra, have listed their stately white-brick Georgian-Colonial mansion in L.A.'s tony Bel Air area on the open market for $27,500,000.
Mister Grey acquired the house in the wake of his split and subsequent divorce from his first wife, Bonnie, in an off-market deal a bit more than four years ago for $22,000,000. The Hollywood honcho's top producing real estate broker told the property gossip gals at the Wall Street Journal that his client made several modifications and upgrades to the house including landscape refreshment, dining room renovation, sitting room addition on the second floor, and professional projection equipment installation in the formal living room so the glammed-up salon can do double duty as a de riguer screening room.
Current listing details show the 10,600+ square foot mansion was originally designed by L.A.-based mansion specialist Richard Manion and built in 2006 on 1.1 gated acres enclosed by electronic drive gates, high stucco walls, and and and even taller row of trees and privacy hedges.
Main floor living and entertaining spaces include: a double height foyer guaranteed to impress guests and pizza delivery people, roomy; sophisticated, cocktail and dinner party accommodating formal living and dining rooms; a cozy paneled office/library; a family room dominated by a gigantic, U-shaped sectional sofa; and, finally, an all-white kitchen with stainless steel appliances and an industrial-sized pot rack that looms over the super-sized center work island.
In addition to the master suite that's complete, according to digital marketing materials, with dual closets and bathrooms, there are three bedroom suites on the second floor clustered around a sitting room, perhaps the above mentioned one he added. One bedroom and one bathroom staff quarters, probably wedged tightly behind the kitchen near the laundry facilities and garage, bring the bedroom total to five.
Other features of note include three fireplaces, a fitness room plus a separate Pilates studio with private bathroom, a three car attached garage with off-street parking for a dozen or so more cars, and a state-of-the-art security system equipped with closed-circuit surveillance cameras.
Being in the prime East Gate section of Bel Air Mister Grey's estate is surrounded by a whole lotta L.A.-based money and power. Next door on one side is the Gothic Tudor mansion once owned by Nic Cage and on the other side is the almost four acre fully landscaped estate Beny Alagem who started Packard Bell and currently owns the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Across the street, funnily enough, are Rick and Kathy Hilton—that would be Paris's parents and the heirs to the Hilton Hotel fortune. Next door to the Hilton's is the home of music industry executive Jerry Moss and few doors down (and across the street) is Mi Patria, the nearly 9,000 square foot hacienda-style mansion another music industry executive, Freddy de Mann, sold to H. Ross Perot Jr. earlier this year for $18,000,000. Just around the bend one way is Michael Eisner's long-time estate while just around the corner in another direction is the newly re-worked estate of Terry Semel whose across the street neighbor is (charity-oriented lady-who-lunches) Alexandra Dwek who bought her big house in 2011 from Giannulli Mossimo and Laurie Laughlin for $16,600,000.
So the reportage goes, Mister Grey and his younger, fashion-oriented second missus have decided to custom build a brand spanking new contemporary residence designed by Napa Valley-based architect Howard Backen on a mostly flat and superbly located 2.3 acre parcel in the heart of the Holmby Hills 'hood that Mister Grey purchased in late 2010 for $18.5 million and where the couple hosted their glitzy, star-studded nuptials in the spring of 2011. The property, directly across the street from the former Walt Disney estate that private investor and Houston Dynamo co-owner Gabriel Brener has made available as an off-market listing with a hair-straightening $90 million price tag, once had a elegant and beautifully proportioned if somewhat shabbily maintained hacienda-style Monterey Colonial on the property that once owned by Frank Sinatra. Alas, after failing to flip the fixer-upper in 2011, when he put it up for sale for $23,500,000, Mister Gray opted to raze the 8,613 square foot red brick residence* and then—once again in vain—tried to sell the newly vacant parcel for $20,000,000.
Mister and Missus Grey also own a 3,000 square foot, full-floor spread in the tower section of the perfectly swellegant (if a mite stuffy) Carlyle hotel and residences in New York City that they bought almost three years ago for $15,500,000.**
*For better or worse, depending on your point of view, the house was not protected under any historical statute or designation.
**The provided floor plan for Mister and Missus Grey's New York City pied-a-terre was retrieved from still available digital listings as it was organized at the time of their 2011 acquisition. For all Your Mama knows, they've radically rearranged the layout.
listing photos: Everett Fenton Gidley for Westside Estate Agency