The Tracks of His Renovation
Grammy Award-winning recording artist/songwriter WILLIAM (SMOKEY) ROBINSON, who last week released 10 new pop/soul songs on the SBK Records album “Double Good Everything,” has just completed a three-year renovation of his Los Angeles estate.
Robinson first made it big in the ‘60s with a group he had formed called the Miracles, for whom he wrote such hits as “Ooo Baby Baby” and “The Tracks of My Tears.”
After leaving the Miracles in 1972, he scored such solo hits as “A Quiet Storm” and “Cruisin’.” He also wrote or co-wrote such famous tunes as “My Girl” for the Temptations, “Ain’t That Peculiar” for Marvin Gaye and “Don’t Mess With Bill” for the Marvelettes.
A Motown superstar who found niches in the Rock and Roll and Songwriters halls of fame, the 51-year-old Robinson is planning to compose the music for an upcoming Broadway musical and is launching “Smoke,” a perfume named in his honor.
He was living in a bachelor condo in L.A. while workmen finished his $4.5-million estate, which was built in 1893 in Hancock Park but was moved in 1912 to a 2 1/2-acre site in another part of Los Angeles.
Robinson bought the property in 1987 and in 1988 hired Ron Dayan of Piccadilly Designs in the Hollywood Hills. Dayan, who has designed interiors for former Lakers’ captain Kareem Abdul Jabbar and actor Lou Gossett Jr., re-designed and decorated Robinson’s three-story, 6,700-square-foot house and yard.
Dayan combined two bedrooms and a sitting area into a master suite with a unit in the bath that simulates sun and rain. He created a large powder room on the first floor where there had been a room for serving afternoon tea. The house now has four bedrooms and six baths.
The house also has a room on the third floor that has a spike-proof turf floor and is devoted to golf, since Robinson is an avid golfer. There is a four-hole putting green in the yard, next to an Oriental-style bridge over a stream topped by an eight-foot high waterfall.
Dayan, who was once a set designer and art director for a BBC comedy show starring Benny Hill, also added a sense of drama in the outdoor lighting, “so it’s like a full moon over the house and 50-foot-tall oak trees,” he said.
The home also has an elaborate security system. One device activates a tune whenever anything larger than a basketball falls into the swimming pool. An underwater camera then shows on a monitor what fell into the pool.
JANE FONDA has put her Santa Monica home on the market at $2.695 million.
The actress-aerobicist has owned the home since the early ‘80s, when she and her ex-husband, Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), moved into it.
She’s selling the property because she’s increasingly spending less time in California and more time in Georgia and Montana, where her fiance, media mogul Ted Turner, has homes. The couple has set a wedding date, but it hasn’t been announced yet.
Fonda’s Santa Monica home has three bedrooms upstairs plus a guest room downstairs and maid’s quarters in a separate building, which also has a gym. Two of the upstairs bedrooms have lofts.
Fonda refurbished the home shortly after buying it. She turned one room into a library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The house is on a double lot with many mature fruit trees.
She also owns a 158-acre ranch in Santa Barbara, which she put up for sale in June at $5.75 million.
Her Santa Monica home is listed with Sheila Greenberg and her son, Howard, both of Fred Sands’ Brentwood office.
SASHA STALLONE, who was divorced from actor Sylvester Stallone in 1985, is personalizing her newly built home in Beverly Park, overlooking Beverly Hills, with some fresh paint and other touches.
The house is on about an acre with a pool and city and mountain views. The house also has four or five bedrooms in a bit more than 10,000 square feet.
Public records show that the property was purchased for about $5 million.
GARY BART, founder of Weight Watchers of Orange County, and his wife, Victoria, a Beverly Hills psychotherapist, have purchased a Bel-Air home that was built in 1927 and is undergoing an extensive remodel.
When the renovation is completed, the 6,500-square-foot home will have four bedrooms, five baths, a separate guest suite, maid’s quarters and a swimming pool. The stable is being turned into an artist’s studio. The home is on slightly more than an acre of land.
Bart is supervising the remodel, and he is also overseeing construction of a waterfront residence for himself and his wife in the Haena area of Kauai.
The Barts bought their Bel-Air property for close to its $5.5-million asking price, sources said. Doug Taylor of Jon Douglas Co.’s Beverly Hills office had the listing.
They’ve listed their Anaheim home at $3.59 million with Len Spielman of Kline Realty in Tustin. That home is 10,000 square feet in size and is on nearly two acres in the Peralta Hills area.
Sports prognosticator WAYNE ROOT, who has written the book “Betting to Win on Sports,” has moved into his new beachfront home in Malibu with his wife, singer Deborah Parks.
Parks was a vocalist with the rock group Emerson, Lake & Palmer, but she is now pursuing a solo career in Christian music.
They bought a two-bedroom home with an exercise room and two oceanfront decks for $750,000. Adriana Daniel of Spinello Realty in Malibu represented the couple.
