Sale of Montecito Villa Sets Top Price
“The largest single-family home sale” in the history of Montecito, that ritzy Santa Barbara County enclave:
That’s how Cecelia Waeschle, associate manager of Rodeo Realty, describes the $6-million all-cash deal for a 17-acre property with a 17-room villa inspired by one of the Pope’s residences north of Rome.
Known as Las Tejas (“The Tiles,” for the 8,500 tiles on its roof), the original house, a Spanish villa, was completed in 1894 by architects Francis W. Wilson and George Washington Smith as a honeymoon home for William Alston II, the son of a South Carolina citrus tycoon.
Young Alston went broke the same year and sold the home to an older brother. The next owner was a woman who called on the same architects to make the estate resemble the 16th-Century gardens and casino of the the Farnese Palace in Italy.
She added such features as a water staircase leading to a garden pavilion 300 feet below, a roll-back ceiling for indoor/outdoor use, a tennis court, swimming pool, poolside cabana with sauna and kitchen, and another building that was used, in her time, as a chauffeur’s cottage but is now an artist’s studio.
The most recent seller was artist Teri Rojas, and the buyer was a lawyer from Washington, D.C. (not, I’m told, related to the Reagan Administration) who was represented by Alexander Velto Realty. Joyce Rey, Rodeo Realty general manager, shared the co-listing with Waeschle, and they had the cooperation of three more agents in Rodeo’s Montecito office.
That $6-million sale is nothing compared with Beverly Hills prices, but Montecito is, after all, a much heftier commute to L.A. Even so, it may not be long before the landmark purchase is topped. There are a few higher listings in the area, including one at a whopping $25 million. (Or you can lease it for $20,000 a month.)
A former home of Dollie Green (daughter of Burton Green, one of the founders of Beverly Hills), the $25-million estate has ocean-front gardens, a pool, boat-launching dock, gatehouse, two guest houses, parking for 20 cars and a main house with seven bedrooms and eight baths--not as big as former Ambassador Walter Annenberg’s Palm Springs spread, but if he’s looking to buy near the Reagans’ Santa Barbara ranch when they return to California in January, this might be worth considering. It was a famous beach club in the early ‘20s, known as The Edgecliffe, said listing agent Bobbi Ward of Schreiber Realty, Beverly Hills.
Leaving the Republican convention early last week, the Reagans were supposed to be at their ranch Saturday. No word on whether the first lady peeked in at the Bel-Air house they will occupy, but I’m told it is due for a major overhaul under her supervision, though details are still top secret. Bavarian Masonry, of Los Angeles, has received the go-ahead to do the masonry.
Jessica Hahn, whose sexual encounter with televangelist Jim Bakker led to his downfall, moved months ago into the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, but now I hear that she is packing up to move into a condo she bought in West Hollywood, where prices go from $100,000-$250,000--not too shabby for a former church secretary, huh?
Johnsondale, the small High Sierra lumber town that was on and off the market for four years, was sold recently for about $3 million, and now its owners are getting ready to sell “individual interest ownerships” to RV’ers and others who might use the place, 25 miles north of Kernville, as a resort.
R-Ranch in the Sequoias Ltd., a company originated by developer Jeff Dennis of Concord, bought the old town in May, with the help of Richard L. Burns & Associates of Rolling Hills, and is now fixing up and adding to the facilities. The few that exist date back to the mill days, from 1935 to 1979.
Plans are to restore the logging camp dining hall and general store, while developing a lodge, tennis courts, stables, a swimming pool and camp sites. Prices aren’t set yet, but probably will average about $12,000 for an undivided interest in the property plus a maintenance fee of $40-$45 a month.
Clothing such stars as Alan Thicke, Tony Danza, Lorenzo Lamas, David Hasselhoff and Sylvester Stallone is paying off for Rick Pallack, who just expanded his Sherman Oaks office and warehouse into two buildings, across the street and next door to his store at 4554 Sherman Oaks Ave.
Pallack owns the two buildings as well as the 2,000-square-foot one housing his store, which he expects to expand next year when some leases in his building next door expire.
He also owns almost an acre with 200 feet of frontage and a 12,000-square-foot building on Ventura Boulevard, one block from Sepulveda Boulevard.
