Siren Song of Hancock Park
Incoming Los Angeles Police Chief WILLIE WILLIAMS and his wife, Evelina, have leased a condo in Hancock Park.
Williams, 48, and his wife leased a three-bedroom, 2,100-square-foot unit for a year at just under $2,000 a month, said leasing agent Katie Chung in Coldwell Banker’s Hancock Park office.
One reason the Williamses chose the condo was because it is in an area that is centrally located and ethnically mixed, Chung said. She described the condo, which is in a small complex that is about 16 years old, as “spacious and well-built, with security parking.”
Reached by phone, Williams said he and his wife had decided on the condo “because it is in a nice residential area that is quiet, with big, older homes and green lawns.
“It has good access to shopping, and it’s close to the office, where I’ll be spending 12 to 13 hours a day,” he said. “We like the convenience until we look around and decide to buy.”
The couple had lived for the past 23 of their 25 years of married life in a Philadelphia row house, where they also raised their three children.
“Our daughter is with us now,” Williams’ wife said, “and one of our sons is here occasionally. Our other son is still in the East.”
LUCILLE BALL’S longtime Beverly Hills home was put up for sale in June, 1989, about two months after the comedienne died. Now, after three years and no sale, the home has been taken off the market and the family has arranged for it to be occupied for a year, sources say.
The original asking price for the white-brick, traditional-style home, with four or five bedrooms and a pool house, was $7.8 million. Before the last listing was canceled at the end of May, the home had been priced at $3.75 million.
Talk about price drops . . . Greenacres, the former Beverly Hills home of silent screen star HAROLD LLOYD, has been reduced from $55 million to $39 million.
The 40-room, 36,000-square-foot house on five acres was built by the late actor in 1927, and he lived in it until he died in 1971.
Ted Field, executive producer of the 1992 suspense film “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” bought the home in 1986 and renovated it before moving into it in 1987.
“He restored every detail, from the floors to the frescoes in the ceilings,” said Bob Burkett, Field’s spokesman.
The property, which Field put on the market a couple of years ago at $55 million, had been lowered to $45 million before the listing was given earlier this month to Stephen Shapiro of Stan Herman, Stephen Shapiro & Associates, formerly known as Stan Herman & Associates.
Pop star KENNY LOGGIN’S 19-acre estate, listed at $10 million, and a three-acre site adjoining a 15-acre property owned by actor MICHAEL DOUGLAS will be part of an unusual open-house tour next Sunday for six to 10 estate properties in Montecito.
“The idea, conceived by Susan Conger of Prudential, is to make it easier for buyers, particularly from Los Angeles, to plan a Sunday to view a variety of estates,” said Paul O’Keeffe of Joyce Gibb, Realtor, Santa Barbara.
The open houses, not normally conducted at any of the estates, are a cooperative effort of Prudential/Rodeo Realty, Fred Sands Realtors, Coldwell Banker, Jon Douglas Co., Pitts & Bachmann and Gibb.
A Hollywood Hills home once owned by W. C. FIELDS and later rented by Cher has been listed at nearly $2 million.
Known for years as “the pink palace” because of its color, the 25-room, 9,000-square-foot-plus home was built in the 1920s and has a disco, tennis court and six-car garage, all on about two acres. The gated home also has an ocean view.
The property was put on the market because it is owned by an Orange County hotelier who rarely uses it, according to listing agents Dorothy Carter and Jodi Hodges of Jon Douglas Co.’s Sunset office.
