Nixons’ Jersey Estate for Sale
Former President RICHARD M. NIXON and his wife, PAT, who are expected to be in Southern California on July 19 for the opening of his presidential library in Yorba Linda, have put their Saddle River, N.J., home on the market at $3.25 million.
They’re moving from the home, where they’ve lived for the last 10 years, to a townhouse they bought in Park Ridge, N.J., which is not far from Saddle River.
Although the Nixons are scaling down in home size and value, their townhouse is in a complex described by sources as “very elegant” and Tudor in style. The building was designed by Eleanore Pettersen, the same architect who designed their present home.
The Saddle River home is a contemporary, built in 1968. The two-story main residence has 15 rooms in 7,000 to 8,000 square feet. The master bedroom has two baths and two dressing rooms, and there are four other family bedrooms and two staff quarters.
The home also has a medieval-style wine room with space for dining and 1,000 bottles; a library; game room for playing table tennis and pool; swimming pool; cabana with dressing rooms, bath and kitchenette, and a tennis court.
The residence sits on four acres behind security gates and a command post, 30 minutes from New York City.
Mary Lenk has the Saddle River listing with Lenk-Friedberg in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
DAVID L. WOLPER, who produced the TV mini-series “The Thorn Birds” and “Roots” and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics, has purchased a 30-acre golf course in the Napa Valley for a second home.
“I was looking for a house up there and was about to give up,” he said by phone. But then he saw the 17-year-old golf club property, which was about to be auctioned.
“My wife said my mouth dropped open,” he recalled. “I happen to be a golf freak, so I said, ‘Wait a second! This is the perfect place!’ ” He bought the nine-hole golf course and its facilities with a bid estimated at $5 million.
Wolper intends to use the course strictly for himself and his friends. He also plans to turn the 20,000-square-foot clubhouse into a family entertainment center. He and his wife have three children in their 20s. “They’ll be spending time there,” he said.
The property has a 1,500-square-foot caretaker’s house, and the site also has an older, 2,000-square-foot house that he plans to tear down. Starting in about two months, Wolper wants to replace it with a 4,000- to 5,000-square-foot Country French-style vacation home designed by architect Doug Phillips and decorated by designer Betty White, both of Los Angeles.
Wolper’s main residence is in Beverly Hills, but he likes Napa, he said, because it has good restaurants and wineries. “I’m not a drinker, and neither is my wife, but I eat grapes,” he said with a chuckle.
Its main attraction to him, however, is that it is 45 minutes by boat to San Francisco and 1 1/2 hours by boat from the Delta. “I happen to be a boat person,” he said. For the last 25 to 30 years, he and his wife have chartered a yacht each year in various places throughout the world, for their vacation.
“We have no other vacation homes,” he said, “and I never dreamed I’d buy a golf course.”
JOHN ENTWISTLE, the bass player and one of the original members of the rock group The Who, has purchased his first home in the United States, sources say.
The British musician bought a three-story hillside home above Sunset Strip for just under $1 million in cash.
He also owns a 42-acre castle on the outskirts of London but said through a spokesman that he has found “the weather and energy of Los Angeles to be more conducive” to his lifestyle.
His new home, in what is known as the Sunset Plaza area, has three bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths in slightly less than 3,000 square feet.
Built about nine years ago, the home is contemporary in style, with “a warm feel to it,” sources say. There are balconies off all three floors of the house, which is filled with 19th-Century French and English antiques.
The home also has a patio with a waterfall flowing into a spa and a mirrored exercise room.
William Durfee of Prudential/Rodeo Realty represented Entwistle.
Multibillionaire BILL GATES, co-founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp., one of the nation’s most successful computer software companies, plans to build a 45,800-square-foot home in the Seattle suburb of Medina, and 80% of the project will be underground.
“He wants to build something of a scale to fit the surroundings and sort of low-key,” said Bob Burke, planning consultant to the city of Medina, “but it won’t be totally buried. He’ll be able to look out at the lake.” The home will have 400 feet of waterfront on Lake Washington.
Most of the 35,800-square-foot main house will be built into a steep hillside. The remaining 10,000 square feet will be used for a caretaker’s house, a lakeside pavilion with a hot tub and barbecue, and an underground garage to house at least 20 cars.
Three kitchens, a TV/theater room and a swimming pool will be among the subterranean features. Plans also call for a sports court for racquetball and volleyball, a 100-foot, two-slip dock, and an artificial estuary and creek circling the house and running down to the lake.
Work on the caretaker’s cottage, the garage and a road into the 4.5-acre site is scheduled to begin this fall. “The big house will be under way after the rains, next spring,” Burke said. The home will take at least two years and an estimated $5 million to $10 million to build.
Gates, a 34-year-old bachelor, now lives in Seattle’s Laurelhurst neighborhood.
Actress KATE JACKSON, who recently put her Benedict Canyon house on the market at $2,375,000, bought the house in 1983 for $1.25 million, not the $485,000 reported in this column from public records, Jackson’s spokeswoman said.
“The records are wrong,” she said. The former owner of Jackson’s property also owned an adjacent lot valued at $485,000, and that is where the figure may have originated, she added.
“And she’s not leaving town,” the spokeswoman said. “She plans to be bicoastal.”
Earlier this year, Jackson moved her belongings to a farm just outside Charlottesville, Va. “We haven’t figured it out yet,” her spokeswoman said, responding to a question whether Jackson will buy or rent in Los Angeles after selling her house.
