$30M Home on Deck for Hitter
Outfielder DANNY TARTABULL--who signed a five-year, $25.5-million contract with the New York Yankees in January--is planning to build a home in the Rancho Santa Fe area that will have, among other features, a batting cage with a viewing platform and a saltwater aquarium with a net to separate the sharks from the swans.
Tartabull, 29, is one of the three highest paid players in baseball, behind No. 1-paid Ryne Sandberg of the Chicago Cubs, who agreed earlier this month to a five-year, $30.5-million package, and Bobby Bonilla of the New York Mets, who signed a five-year, $29.5-million contract.
A free agent before joining the Yankees, Tartabull has averaged 26 homers and 89 runs batted in during his six-year career. While playing last season with the Kansas City Royals, he was the best power hitter in baseball.
He and his wife, Kellie, who is pregnant, have a daughter, Danica, and son, Danny Jr.
The Tartabulls have had an 11-bedroom, 27,000-square-foot home designed that is expected to be worth about $30 million when completed on some property they own next door to singer Janet Jackson’s house, both in Rancho Santa Fe Farms. The drawings are done, and construction is expected to begin in December.
According to the drawings, the batting cage will be built next to a boarding area for a scaled-down train capable of carrying the outfielder and his family around the two- to three-acre estate. Train stops are planned at the game room, Tiki bar, basketball/tennis court and putting green.
Plans also call for a 20-by-20-foot saltwater aquarium, 11 feet deep, and an indoor/outdoor swimming pool with a beach, 14-foot waterfall, island and waterslide, descending from the children’s bedrooms.
Other features are a sports training center with exercise room and health bar; 3,500-square-foot master bedroom suite; two-story movie theater with seating for 45; pinball/video arcade, retractable dining-room ceiling, 20-foot glass dome over a 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot entry, and aviary.
“This is the first client I’ve had who has said, ‘Do whatever you want--just have fun with it,’ ” said Dan Lang, the Agoura Hills architect who designed the Rancho Santa Fe house and is working on an expansion of another home that the Tartabulls own.
The Tartabulls have maintained a hilltop residence in Malibu for the past two years, but the home they are expanding is in Saddleriver, N.J.
The Saddleriver home, a year-old contemporary with 13,000 square feet in three stories, is getting a 3,000-square-foot addition with an indoor pool and game and exercise rooms. Interiors will be completed in a couple of months by Steven Chase of Rancho Mirage.
ANGELA LANSBURY, who has starred in the hit TV series “Murder, She Wrote” for eight years, has purchased a small house with her daughter, Deirdre, in Malibu.
Lansbury’s daughter and son-in-law--who own the restaurant Positano, on Main Street in Santa Monica--plan to live in the home, which has two bedrooms in 1,200 square feet and sold in the $600,000 range.
Built in the 1940s but recently remodeled, the home has an atrium and is on the beach in the Big Rock vicinity, near Lansbury’s own residence.
Fred Sands Realtors had the listing through Steve Moritz, in the firm’s Brentwood office, and Lee Clarke, in the Malibu office. They could not be reached for comment.
KNBC news anchor KEITH MORRISON has put his Studio City home on the market at $1.2 million.
“He has too many children for his five-bedroom house,” said listing agent Mike Glickman, executive director, Jon Douglas Co., Encino. Morrison has six children.
Morrison’s 5,000-square-foot home is a Connecticut-style farmhouse with a guest cottage, tennis court and swimming pool. “He’s planning to move to a much larger house somewhere between Studio City and the Channel 4 studios,” Glickman said.
ERNIE REYES JR.--who played one of the turtles in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and its sequel “Secret of the Ooze” and co-starred in the ABC series “Sidekicks”--has become a first-time home buyer, at 21, of a small house in Studio City.
Reyes, son of a well-known martial arts expert who has choreographed martial-arts films, bought the two-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home for about $500,000. The living room has a 19-foot-high ceiling.
The house was built in 1931 by an artist named John Doyan for his wife, Mildred Rutherford, a silent-screen actress, but it was remodeled just before Reyes, a bachelor, bought it.
The remodel preserved much of the original statuary, fountains, fixtures and tiles, which Doyan hand painted, said a spokesman for Louis Hofstadter & Associates, which completed the refurbishing.
The actor has signed a multi-film contract with New Line Cinema and is starting work on a new film in Hong Kong in April.
