Twenty Bel-Air Acres Bought for Estate
Nobody who was involved in this deal is talking, even enough to mention the sellers’ or buyer’s names, but four vacant lots owned by Alexander Haagen, Coliseum Commission president and well known Los Angeles-area shopping center developer, and his wife, Charlotte, have been sold to a wealthy gent from London, who plans--knowledgeable West-Siders say--to build the largest estate in Bel-Air.
Located just off Stone Canyon Road on Levico Way, the property consists of 20 acres that took considerable time and trouble to subdivide. Several hills were shored up by attractive crib walls.
The Haagens completed the work after they bought the parcel, then in foreclosure, for $4.6 million in March, 1985.
The new owner, who purchased the property under the name of BRL Associates, plans to level some of the lots and feather them into each other so he can build a tennis court, pavilion, swimming pool and what was described as “a part-time home.” He has several.
He also plans to plant royal palms all along the long, winding driveway leading to the top of his little mountain, which has magnificent, city and reservoir views.
Industry sources indicate that the property sold for $6 million.
Architect Helmut Jahn, who was recently described as one of Chicago’s “starchitects” for buildings he designed that reshaped the financial and civic axis of the Loop, was in Los Angeles last week for a topping-out high tea for The Tower, the 23-story office building he designed for the Prospect Co. and Platt Development Corp. at 10940 Wilshire Blvd.
The Tower, one of Westwood’s tallest buildings when completed in January, is Jahn’s first project in California. City Bank provided a $56-million loan for its construction.
During the ceremony--complete with a pianist in hard hat and tuxedo--an announcement was made that the 100-foot-long temporary, pedestrian barricade, created by California artist Billy Al Bengston, will be donated--at the end of construction--to the Museum of Contemporary Art, which will auction it as a fund-raiser.
Also this: There will be a competition, starting in September, between the nine architectural schools in California to select 18 finalists to submit models for an office structure that might have been appropriate for The Tower’s site. The winner, announced in April, will get $5,000 and a six-month apprenticeship with Jahn.
Pop singers/wife-husband team Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis have sold their Beverly Hills home, built in 1933, and bought a newer one in upper Benedict Canyon.
Their new home has a tennis court, but their old one wasn’t shabby.
With 20 rooms (including five bedrooms and five baths), it sold for $2.5 million to another married couple.
Despite their success in the music world since leaving the Fifth Dimension 12 years ago, McCoo and Davis are still associated in many people’s minds with the singing group, which was one of the hottest in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Architects might say that designing is music to their ears, but here are some architects who actually turned their talents to dance:
They work for a Miami-based firm with the melodic-sounding name Arquitectonica, and a sample of their work can be seen at 8 tonight in UCLA’s Royce Hall, during a dance piece called “Enclosed Time,” choreographed by Nina Wiener.
Arquitectonica has designed buildings for several years, but this is the first time the firm designed a stage set.
Anybody see a three-foot-tall statue of a Mexican boy with a donkey in hand? If it’s Maurice Kusell’s statue, it’s a true hot property!
Kusell, a long-time Hollywood choreographer and Glendale shopping center developer, says someone stole the statue from his front yard in the Los Feliz area, so he put up a sign offering a $100 reward, but the sign also disappeared.
Try, try again: Kusell has put up another, identical sign, saying that no questions will be asked if the statue is returned. Kusell is at 213/662-3046.
Gail Claridge, the builder from Chatsworth who saved a ’36 Bel-Air landmark from demolition by buying it about a year ago, has sold the house after extensively renovating it and adding an estimated 3,000 feet to its 4,000.
John Bedrosian, co-founder and senior vice president of National Medical Enterprises, and his wife, Judy, purchased the home, which was one of the first on Stone Canyon Road when it was built just before the Hotel Bel-Air now three houses away.
The mansion was known for years as Sturdywood. It was called “Claridge House” when it was used this past year in TV’s “The Colbys” and “Ohara.”
Claridge modernized the home while trying to maintain the Georgian-Colonial architectural style designed by architect Alfred Trousdale Gilman. She is decorating the house with Georgian antiques for the Bedrosians.
The house sold for $3.25 million with the help of Cecelia Waeschle and Joyce Rey of Merrill Lynch/Rodeo Realty, who represented Claridge, and Julie Williamson of Merrill Lynch, Woodland Hills, who represented the buyers.
