‘Dynasty’ Producer to Build Mansion?
Aaron Spelling--producer of such TV hits as “Dynasty” and “Hotel”--apparently plans to build his own version of the fictitious Carringtons’ mansion.
The word is that he is getting bids and interviewing contractors to build a 72,000-square-foot house! Why, that’s as big as a department store or a hotel! Bigger than Hearst Castle! (Its main house and three guest houses total 62,222 square feet.) If not the largest, Spelling’s home would certainly be one of the largest privately owned, single-family residences in the world.
It would be built on the site of the old Bing Crosby house in Holmby Hills. Spelling bought the Crosby house, on 4.5 acres backing up to the Los Angeles Country Club and across the street from Holmby Park, about three years ago for a reported $10.5 million in cash.
It was a $10.5-million fixer-upper, needing a new kitchen and new baths. It had a good 20,000 square feet under roof, and all of it was pretty much worn.
Crosby lived there at least 20 years after it was designed in the late 1930s by architect Gordon Kaufman, who also built the 46,000-square-foot Greystone mansion in Beverly Hills for the oil-rich Dohenys in 1928. Crosby sold his house to Patrick J. Frawley Jr., president of Schick Laboratories, who sold it to Spelling, who reportedly plans to replace it with the new mansion.
P.S.: For years, people say, there was a monkey cage in the back yard of the Crosby house that provided a form of security. When there was an intruder, the monkey made so much noise that the trespasser would leave or the police would arrive. Wonder if that monkey cage is still there . . .
Since the L. A. Raiders aren’t playing in the Super Bowl today and he tore an Achilles’ tendon in November and was expected to be out for the rest of the season, anyway, defensive end Lyle Alzado is practicing--not football, but cooking.
He’s going to cook a full Italian meal, complete with his special pasta, for the benefit of underprivileged kids.
No specific date set yet, but it will be in mid-February, somewhere in the Los Angeles area, and it will be sponsored by Beverly Hills real estate developer Cesar Lopez Jr., who bought Alzado’s culinary talents at a black-tie benefit auction and ball last November at the Century Plaza Hotel for the Associates for Troubled Children.
Lopez is the fellow who last August demolished the Sunset Boulevard mansion that was originally the stately home of Beverly Hills founder M. H. Whittier. More recently, it was owned by Saudi Arabian Sheik Mohammed al-Fassi, who enraged neighbors by painting its outdoor statues of nudes in natural skin and hair tones.
Until Lopez razed it, the house, which was gutted by fire five years ago, was standing vacant and decaying. Lopez has plans to build two $10-million estates in its place but is still waiting for the city’s final approvals.
Last week, Lopez and his firm, Custom Space Builders, toasted completion of their newest home in another part of Beverly Hills: a two-story, 8,500-square-foot wood-and-marble residence listed at $2.95 million with Mary Douvan at Beverly Realty Enterprises. (Douvan is the one who represented Lopez’s company about a year ago in the sale to Lakers star Magic Johnson of a Bel-Air house built by Lopez.)
Author Sidney Sheldon now has his daughter, Mary, and her husband, Barry Dastin (an attorney with the Century City firm of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan) living less than a 5-minute drive away, thanks to family friend Micheline Swift, that New York fashion model-turned costume designer-turned real estate agent who works out of the Beverly Hills offices of Ron Abrams Realtors.
Swift, wife of David Swift (who created the 1950s TV show “Mr. Peepers” and was writer/producer/director of the movie “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and other films), sold the Dastins a house in Beverly Hills--a lot easier commute to the Holmby Hills residence of that famous writer of “Master of the Games,” “Bloodline” and “The Other Side of Midnight.” The Dastins just moved to California from New York.
Swift, born in Switzerland, no sooner sold the Dastins their house than she listed a true Mediterranean villa at $2 million. It’s on the Mediterranean--in Nice to be exact--and it’s owned by the mayor of Nice, who also owns a Beverly Hills home that Swift is marketing. The price: $895,000, not including the fabulous Lalique (crystal) collection that the mayor keeps there. Seems the mayor wants to buy a larger property in the Los Angeles area.
