Julian Lennon Buys WW II Bunker Site
Julian Lennon has purchased a mountaintop estate in the Santa Monica Mountains, which was used as the site of a World War II bunker.
The pop musician, son of John Lennon, closed escrow Friday on the acre-size property with 360-degree city/valley views and a private, gated road. Richard Somers, who sold the site, said the purchase price was between $1 million and $2 million.
“I had it on the market, took it off, then put it back on, and it sold in a day,” Somers said.
Erin Caldwell of Alvarez, Hyland & Young represented Lennon and Somers. “I also sold Julian’s house in the Hollywood Hills, and I represented both parties in that deal,” she noted.
Lennon’s new residence is the remodeled bunker, which was expanded from 2,400 to 4,000 square feet and now has a swimming pool and a huge yard. The U.S. Army Signal Corps built the bunker as an early-warning radar station with 13-inch-thick, solid concrete walls. It was designed to look like a house and had fake windows. “I put in some real ones,” Somers said.
He also completed the expansion after buying the site in 1967. “I paid $30,000 for it and put in maybe $150,000, including the purchase of adjacent property.”
After the war, the bunker was used as a vault to store Atomic Energy Commission films of hydrogen and atomic bomb testing, Somers said, adding, “and then the government abandoned the site, and the owner gave it to her son, who converted the bunker to a livable, bachelor house.”
That was in the ‘50s, when Somers was a student at Hamilton High School. “I used to park on the property with my dates, and I’d say that someday I’d buy the place and make it into a lavish estate,” he remembered.
As vice chairman of American Mobile Systems, a radio communications business, Somers used the mountain site for awhile for a repeater station as well as a home.
He is also a partner in Sigma Telecommunications, which just bought the 160-acre top of Mt. Harvard, near Mt. Wilson, from RKO.
Ma Maison Sofitel, that long-talked-about hotel project across the street from the Beverly Center, will hold a ribbon cutting Monday to mark its opening.
Named for the now-closed, Westside restaurant made popular by Patrick Terrail, the 10-story, $55-million hotel has 311 guest rooms, two restaurants (including another Ma Maison) and a piano lounge. Terrail is food and beverage director for the restaurants, banquet facilities and employee cafeteria.
Sheldon Gordon, an L.A.-based real estate developer, and Accor North America, an arm of the French firm Accor, are the owners. Starkman & Vidal & Christensen of Los Angeles were the architects.
Hard up for a last-minute, unusual holiday gift for the house? Here’s an idea for those who are not on a budget:
Rik Kiszely, who recently opened the studio/gallery Exclusifurs in Newport Beach, makes mink art furniture--furniture upholstered in real mink. Prices start at $12,500.
What apartment rehab has marked more than $100 million in condo sales? The Marina City Club Towers, built in 1972 and remodeled in ‘86, after the J.H. Snyder Co. bought the Marina del Rey complex. Of the 600 units, 343 have been sold.
