View Home Fits Rapper to a T
Rap singer ICE-T, whose controversial song “Cop Killer” was yanked from the market by Time Warner at the rapper’s request, has purchased a home in the Sunset Strip area for about $1.2 million.
The 32-year-old rapper, who was born in New Jersey but grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, leaves this weekend for a concert tour in Australia, to be followed by tours in Europe and the United States, and he will start filming an HBO series in September, his manager said.
Ice-T has won a number of gold albums since his debut album “Rhyme Pays” came out in 1987. He also appeared in two 1991 films, playing a streetwise, drug-detesting cop in “New Jack City” and Denzel Washington’s childhood friend in “Ricochet.” He made a third film this year, but it hasn’t been released yet.
The singer’s new, 4,500-square-foot home has three levels and 180-degree views from the ocean to downtown Los Angeles. The master suite has a deck where he plans to put a spa. He also plans to build a pool.
He bought the 3-year-old home from a doctor who was transferred and never occupied it. Ice-T moved into the house, put his gold records on the walls and replaced the wood floors with black marble, to match his black leather sofas, before leaving for Australia.
He decided to sell his former Hollywood Hills residence, which he bought early last year, “because he likes to work at home, and one of his neighbors asked him to turn down the volume,” said Janet Factor, the Prudential Rodeo agent who represented him in both purchases and has his listing. “He wanted a place with soundproofed rooms and a fourth bedroom,” she said.
His former residence, a view home built in 1950 but recently remodeled, has three bedrooms and a gym with a spa, which he built. The asking price was just reduced from $798,000 to $659,000.
John Gould of June Scott/Jon Douglas Co. had the listing on the home that Ice-T just bought.
Newlyweds RUSS COURTNALL, star hockey player with the Montreal Canadiens, and actress PARIS VAUGHAN, who appears as Nicole in the campy new film “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” have bought a home in the Hollywood Hills for about $700,000.
Courtnall and Vaughan, daughter of the late jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, were married in June.
Their new home has three bedrooms in about 4,000 square feet, built in the 1970s, but recently refurbished with marble floors, skylights, a sauna in the master suite and a spa on the deck just outside the master suite.
The property was listed with Jane Shore of Fred Sands’ Hollywood Hills office. Pat Williams, of the same office, represented the buyers.
Plans for an enormous Beverly Hills home stirred actor Jack Lemmon and other neighborhood residents to speak in protest a few days ago at the first public hearing on the project.
The 59,000-square-foot estate, which realty sources say is planned for the SULTAN OF BRUNEI, would replace three houses that are on about four acres once occupied by a single estate built in 1927. The property was subdivided in 1953.
“We want to return it to its days of glory,” said architect Robert Earl, who designed the new estate to have a 10-bedroom main house, five-bedroom guest villa, six-bedroom guardhouse and parking for 25 vehicles. The home would also have a gym, ballroom, cinema, china vault and elevators.
The original 18,000-square-foot estate house, once owned by actor James Coburn, would be “removed, and a new, main house would be built on its site; the house built by (late architect William) Pereira would be removed and become the swimming pool and yard area, and the third house (owned by the late screenwriter Nunnally Johnson) would be removed and become a tennis court,” Earl said.
The new, neoclassic traditional main house would have the same setbacks and height of the original estate house, and a new gate house would be similar to the original one but larger, he added.
The main house would have 41,000 square feet, making it one of the largest houses in Beverly Hills.
The biggest house in town is Greystone, built for oil baron Edwin Doheny in the 1920s but now owned by the city of Beverly Hills and used for location filming. Its main house has 46,054 square feet, according to Beverly Hills real estate broker Jeff Hyland in his book “Estates of Beverly Hills.”
In nearby Holmby Hills, producer Aaron Spelling’s home has 56,500 square feet.
RICHARD and BARRY HILTON, grandsons of the late hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, welcomed 300 guests last Sunday at a preview of their Brentwood Country Estates, owned and developed by the Hilton Hotel family.
The gated 230-acre project, in Mandeville Canyon, has 14 home sites in all, averaging 3.84 acres and priced from $2.5 million, through Prudential/Rodeo Realty and Hilton Realty. There are 140 acres of open space.
Among the celebrities attending were Vanna White, Esther Williams, Anna Maria Alberghetti and Tony Franciosa.
