‘Sheik’ Site Planned for Two Mansions
Sheik Mohammed al-fassi’s former Beverly Hills property--which caused such a furor when its statues of nudes were painted in natural hues, its Grecian urns were filled with plastic flowers, and its once-grand house was burned in 1980 and then was razed five years later--is now in the hands of owners who plan to build two mansions there.
The second and last lot of the two-lot site was sold a few days ago for just under $6 million, which is believed to be the largest land sale so far in Beverly Hills. The other, smaller (1.5-acre) lot sold last year in the mid-$3-million range.
A wealthy man from France bought the larger (2-acre) lot, said Bruce Nelson of Asher Dann & Associates, who had the listing and also represented the buyer. The seller, of both lots, is a doctor from Florida.
Plans are being made, Nelson added, to put two, 20,000-square-feet-plus homes on the lots. The smaller parcel is owned by a corporation. Nelson wasn’t involved in that sale.
John Wayne’s longtime estate in Newport Beach closed escrow Dec. 30 at $6.5 million.
It was one of the highest--if not the highest--sales in Orange County history, said Eleanor Bowie of Coldwell Banker, who had the $6.6-million listing since last summer.
Robert Cohen, Beverly Hills developer and co-owner of the new Four Seasons hotel in that area, and his wife bought the Wayne house, which was most recently owned by Burton Bettingen, a daughter of Beverly Hills co-founder Burton Green. Bettingen died in 1986. (Wayne had owned the house for about 16 years when he died in 1979.)
The new owners plan to remodel the 1951 home and replace the dock with one to accommodate their new, 120-foot yacht, which is the same size as Wayne’s. The property has 154 feet of water frontage.
John Campbell, also of Coldwell Banker, represented the buyers.
Tom Bosley, star of NBC’s “Father Dowling Mysteries” (which premiered Friday), and his wife, Patricia, are “reluctantly coming down from the mountain to live in a condo, because of Tom’s travel schedule with his new series,” says Natalie Janger of Mike Silverman & Associates.
Janger has the $2,295,000 listing on the Bosleys’ Benedict Canyon home, which is Country French in style, gated and has three bedrooms, a maids room, a huge exercise room and a swimming pool, all on an extensively landscaped lot. (Howard Cunningham, portrayed by Bosley in TV’s “Happy Days,” never had it so good.)
Peter Koch, a defensive end with the Kansas City Chiefs who has made acting appearances in TV’s “Dallas” and in the movie “Heat” (starring Burt Reynolds), has sold his Brentwood house for $740,000 to Pat Harrington Jr., who played Schneider, the building superintendent who viewed himself as the Rudolf Valentino of Indianapolis in the sitcom “One Day at a Time.”
Carole Schiffer with Fred Sands Realtors had the listing and is working with Koch to find another house. Koch is co-starring in the to-be-released Tri-Star movie “Lover Boy” with Patrick Dempsey, Kate Jackson and Carrie Fisher.
Kenny and Marianne Rogers rented this place for about 3 1/2 years at $35,000 a month, but the Beverly Hills-area house, built in 1939, was sold a few weeks ago, we just learned, to a TV executive for about $8 million, all in cash. The deal was all in the family, so to speak, for Stan Herman’s realty firm. Herman owned the house, and he was represented by Stephen Shapiro, while the buyer was represented by Valerie Fitzgerald.
As promised, here is more on one of the first Beverly Hills-area homes to sell for more than $4 million this year . . . . The owner of a local clothing manufacturing company is buying a new house built by Columbia Savings on slightly more than an acre facing the Los Angeles Country Club for $5.5 million, and escrow is due to close Monday. Stephen Shapiro of Stan Herman & Associates is representing the buyer.
On TV’s “thirtysomething,” Ken Olin plays an owner of a small advertising agency, and that’s what one of the sellers of Olin’s new Brentwood home also does. The seller, Bill Vogel, has UTA Airlines as a client, but UTA is not his employer, as reported last week. Bill and his wife, Joan Baeder Vogel, bought what she described as a “magnificent home” facing the ocean at Marina del Rey “with 30 feet on the sand.” The Vogels also have a home in Ojai.
