Stallone Shelling Out Money at Two Homes
Too bad Sylvester Stallone’s “Rambo III,” that expensive movie shot in Israel and the Mojave Desert, has been doing poorly at the box office. For the past few months, its star--Stallone, of course--has been shelling out some extra cash on his home front--make that two home fronts.
(Guess he’s counting on the success of his new back-to-back movie projects: “The Gangster,” to be followed by “The Executioner.”)
While he was getting the California Coastal Commission’s go-ahead to dig a 30-by-18-foot pool and spa in his Malibu back yard, the actor/writer/director was also having a house built for himself on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Now that house is expected to be completed by the end of this month.
The good news is that Stallone’s Kauai retreat is not like some homes of other Hollywood types: ostentatious. His island home will be Hawaiian style with two stories nestled in some trees, on Anini Beach.
It’s not a super large house--4,000 square feet. And it’s not being built at a humongous cost, either. Construction costs on the island are $90 to $150 a square foot, and his were estimated to be in the middle. How refreshing!
Stallone’s house on Kauai isn’t even that secluded, since it is being built next to a couple of other homes, either planned or in construction--all being developed by a partnership between the actor, his business manager Lloyd Zeiderman and Kauai real estate advisors Pat Harrington and John Ferry.
But he’s a smart guy, that Stallone, to put some of his earnings, though smaller from “Rambo III” than he’d like, into real estate--especially in Hawaii. As most readers know, Honolulu and the rest of Oahu have been swamped by Japanese home and hotel buyers, but Kauai missed the action--until now.
One of the houses to be built next to Stallone’s will be for a successful Japanese fellow in the satellite communications business, who is having an eastern-style room designed for his American guests and a western-style room for his Japanese visitors.
He’s one of the first Japanese, in the Hawaiian investment wave that started months ago, to buy in Kauai. And, as a local broker put it: “Japanese buyers are beginning to trickle in here now.”
The Amanda Foundation, which has placed--by its count--more than 5,000 homeless dogs and cats with families throughout Southern California since it was founded 12 years ago by realtor Gillian Lange, will hold a fund-raiser--a black-tie dinner-dance with casino games and a live auction--Oct. 22 at the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills.
And get this: Organized by Lange and three other Jon Douglas Co. sales associates--Liz Armato, Susan Jacobs and Jann Hiller, the evening is already sold out!
Because of its location? Maybe. Because of some of its confirmed guests? Perhaps. There will be such stars as Michael Landon, Kirstie Alley, Sandy Duncan, Loretta Swit, Parker Stevenson, Casey and Jean Kasem, and Ed Marinaro.
It might be sold out, because of such prizes as a New York vacation via MGM Grand Air. But more likely, its backers say, the event quickly rallied 450 people in the community, because of what the nonprofit foundation does:
It is dedicated “to rescuing animals spending their final days at (city and county) shelters.” Tickets are $250 each, with $175 (tax deductible) of that going to the foundation.
In case you didn’t hear, the American Cinematheque, mentioned in last week’s Hot Property column, will own and occupy a four-story building within developer/former film producer Melvin Simon’s $300-million Hollywood Promenade, to be built next to the historic Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Ground breaking is planned in early ‘89, with the whole complex due to open in mid-1991.
Jon Jerde is designing the Promenade, and Craig Hodgetts of Hodgetts & Fung is consulting architect for the nonprofit Cinematheque, which will present, daily, “the best of film and video--from the classics to the outer frontiers of the art form.”
At a press conference last Thursday, Gary Essert, Cinematheque founder/artistic director, also announced that the 45,000-square-foot facility will have three theaters, a multi-media lab, a cafe-bar, bookstore, exhibition gallery and offices. A drive to pay for the $13.4-million job has been launched. (Simon’s company already donated $3.5 million of it.)
Whether or not inquiring minds want to know . . . the National Enquirer will open its first L.A. office this month (despite the death last Sunday of the publication’s multimillionaire owner, Generoso Pope Jr.) at 8730 Sunset Blvd., just a few steps away from such celebrity watering holes as Nicky Blair’s, Le Dome and Spago. The five-year, $270,000-lease, for the 2,000-square-foot space, was negotiated by Don Ferris and Susan Loranger of L.J. Hooker International.