LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $30,000,000
SIZE: 8+ acres (over three parcels), 9,204 square feet, 6 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We first caught wind of it from Yolanda Yakketyyak the other day and then we heard it from Peter Property seller and now we've confirmed it with property records that software heiress/ Oscar-nominated movie producer Megan Ellison (American Hustle, Her, Zero Dark Thirty, Spring Breakers, True Grit) shelled out $30,000,000 for a rather (in)famous estate on a private promontory in the Mount Olympus 'hood high above Hollywood and the eastern end of the famed Sunset Strip.
Property records show young Miss Ellison—she's just 27 and an up and coming real estate baller like her hardcore property baller daddy Larry Ellison—shelled out $20,000,000 for a curvaceous and—ahem—architecturally adventurous mansion on 3.01 gated acres. Property records also show Tinseltown wunderkind concurrently acquired two undeveloped parcels of land directly below the house that total, according to listing details, 5.17 acres.
There are some who say the glass and concrete mansion—the kids at Curbed once described it as "supervillain worthy"—was built for game show host Alex Trebek and others who say the property was owned in the 1980s by deceased Entertainment Industry titan Merv Griffin but, according to online resources, the house wasn't even built until 1990, so.... We do know from a thorough study of the available property records is that the space ship-like residence was sold several times in the 1990s before it was purchased in March 2002 for $4.4 million by a Nevada-based concern that Your Mama's research and several of our better informed informants—cross their hearts and hope to die—say is controlled by internet news pioneer turned venture capitalist Eddy Aslanian.
We don't know if Mister Aslanian actually occupied the premises on a full or part time basis but he is well known among a certain segment of party-going Angelenos for hosting large and—allegedly—sometimes sordid soirees behind the gates of the Mount Olympus estate. However, puppies, this property can't speak on or confirm any of the more salacious scuttlebutt because we don't know a damn thing, okay?
Over the years the property was leased out and featured in numerous movies—it was Lou Ferrigno's house in I Love You, Man, scads of fashion photo shoots, and any number of television commercials including a 2013 holiday themed advert for Infiniti automobiles. We've been told that several if not many porno flicks have been filmed on the property although, once again, Your Mama can't speak to the veracity of those rumors because we don't know nuthin' about them.
Anyways, the mansion popped up for sale on the open market in June 2012 with a $22,000,000 price tag. Four months later the price dropped to $19,800,000 where it stayed until Miss Ellison came along and (somewhat curiously) snatched it up for two hundred thousand clams more than the asking price.
Listing details and other digital marketing materials Your Mama scared up show the three-story house, a wedding cake-like tangle of swooping curves designed by a relatively unknown architect named Richard Schwarz, spans 9,204 square feet* with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms plus two guest apartments.
Other features of the gated estate include off-street parking for upwards of 25 cars, an oval-shaped sunken "formal" living room the size of a hotel lobby, a separate but adjoining dining room with a long curved wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and a well-equipped kitchen with a very distinct early 1990s vibe. There are also, we gleaned from listings, an office, a game room, and a media room.
In addition to the numerous (heated) balconies and terraces with unobstructed views that really and truly sweep over the whole of the Los Angeles basin from downtown to—on a clear day—the Pacific Ocean, additional backyard recreation amenities include a grotto style swimming pool and spa tucked up under the cantilevered balconies of the upper floors. There's at least one outdoor fireplace/fire pit as well as an un-fenced sand volleyball court. Your Mama wonders how many dozens of volleyballs have been lost when an errant bump, spike or serve launched the ball over the short hedge and down the steep hillside.
Your Mama assumes—and genuinely hopes—Miss Ellison will bring in an army of (hazmat suit donning disinfectors,) innovative architects, savvy designers, ingenious landscaping gurus, and nice-gay decorators to do over every inch of the house and property. Although good ol' Yolanda thinks it's pie in the sky, we'd like to think that with five million bucks the property could be an honest-to-goodness show stopper. Since she's yet to ring Your Mama's battered Princess phone and clue us in we haven't an iota what Miss Ellison plans to do with for the 5+ acres she bought just below the house but, according to marketing materials, there's room for four houses with plans and permits already in place for three.
Some of the children will surely gripe and complain to no end that this lady is plum cray-cray for spending so much moolah for the house and the vacant parcels below it. But remember, kittens and caboodles, not only is Miss Ellison an heiress to one of the world's largest fortunes—Big Daddy Ellison has a net worth estimated to be in the neighborhood of $43 billion—earlier this year she managed to pocket, much to the real estate flabbergast of many and the wild-eyed chagrin of others, more than $14 million on the sale of her three very contemporary side-by-side houses on Nightingale Drive above the Sunset Strip. Those of the children who have not pickled their brains with liquor-spiked egg nog may recall that one of the largest of the three was sold for $21 million to billionaire tech tycoon and dedicated philanthropist Ted Waitt and the other two, according to our network of knowledgeable snitches, were snatched up by an English 30-something year old media mogul named Ashley Tabor, the son of billionaire bookmaker and real estate investor Michael Tabor. (All three houses, we've been told, will be substantially remodeled or razed to make way for brand new mansions.)
Miss Ellison has been on a bit of a real estate tear this year. In addition to the three houses she sold above the Sunset Strip she also owns another if far more modest house high in the Bird Streets 'hood in L.A. that she also had up for sale but, we've been told by many people in a position to know these things, is in litigation due to some shenanigans that we'll not get into here.
This last summer (June, 2013) Miss Ellison coughed up $2.5 million for a spectacularly unique one-bedroom apartment in the fabulous and famous Police Building on lower Manhattan's SoHo/Chintown border and, for reasons that we're not clear about, she recently backed out of the purchase of Anjelica Huston's live-work compound in Venice, CA.
*The official listing for the property shows 9,204 square feet but at least one digital listing Your Mama turned up shows it measures "Over 10,000 sq. ft." Make of the discrepancy what will.
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