Angel Alights on Pelican Hill

California Angels pitcher CHUCK FINLEY has purchased an Orange County home site of almost an acre for about $2 million, sources say.

He bought the property in the guard-gated community of Pelican Hill in Newport Coast, a new, 9,400-acre-plus development between Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.

He is said to be planning to build a Mediterranean-style, 12,000-square-foot house there, with city and ocean views.

“He loves to play golf, and there are two golf courses at Pelican Hill,” a source said.

His home is expected to be completed within the next three years in the same community where author Dean Koontz is also building a large residence.

Koontz, who wrote “Dark Rivers of the Heart” and “Strange Highways,” was planning to build a 65,000-square-foot home on 2.5 acres, but he scaled down the house to about 30,000 square feet, sources have said.

Finley, 33, has been living in a custom home in Newport Beach with his 3-year-old daughter, Wynter, and her mother, actress Tawny Kitaen, with whom Finley has had a six-year relationship, sources say. Kitaen was on NBC’s revival of “WKRP in Cincinnati” and ABC’s “America’s Funniest People.”

Selected by the Angels in 1985, Finley secured a three-year, $12-million deal with the club in January, and the club holds an option on a fourth year that could make the contract worth $18 million. He might have been able to sign for $5 million a year with another club, sources have said, but Finley was reported in The Times earlier this year as saying, “I enjoy the Angels . . . Mr. and Mrs. Autry have been good to me. I felt comfortable. I was willing to take less money to stay there.”

Having spent all of his major league career with the Angels, Finley, a two-time All-Star, became the club’s winningest left-hander last season. By January, he had a career record of 114-98 with a 3.58 earned-run average in 309 games. Spyro Kemble, who heads his own company in Newport Beach, represented Finley in his purchase, and Marion Buie and Maureen White represented The Irvine Co., the seller.

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Playboy magazine founder HUGH HEFNER, who already owns one house down the road from the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, has purchased a 7,400-square-foot house in the same neighborhood for nearly $7 million, sources say.

Built in the late 1920s, the house Hefner just bought is on 2.3 acres along the golf course of the Los Angeles Country Club.

Hefner bought a 6,000-square-foot house near the Playboy Mansion last August for about $2 million, sources said at the time.

A spokesman said then that Hefner, now 70, bought that house as a place for him, his wife--1988 Playmate of the Year Kimberly Conrad--and their two young sons to get away from the corporate environment at the Playboy Mansion, which would remain their main residence and workplace. Hefner also owns a beach house in Malibu.

Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson & Associates represented both sides of the most recent transaction.

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Rock singer GRACE SLICK, who went from modeling to fronting Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, is said to have bought a Malibu home for just under $1 million.

“She was house hunting for someone else in Malibu but fell so much in love with the home and its ocean view that she bought it,” said Realtor Susan Stark.

Stark, through the Brentwood office of Coldwell Banker, represented Slick in the purchase and has the listing on Slick’s residence in the Laurel Canyon area of Hollywood.

That home, priced at $475,000, has three bedrooms in 1,750 square feet. Built in 1958, it was recently remodeled and has skylights, a hot tub and a woodsy setting. Slick, in her 50s, has owned the home for a couple of years.

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The widow of filmmaker H.B. (TOBY) HALICKI, who was killed at age 48 in a 1989 accident on the set of the sequel to his cult hit “Gone in 60 Seconds,” has listed a 7.3-acre home site in Palos Verdes at $2.7 million.

The couple had planned to build a home on the property, which has a panoramic view of Los Angeles.

Halicki’s widow, DENICE SHAKARIAN HALICKI, is planning to remake “Gone in 60 Seconds” and is also working on a book about their lives together, a source said.

The book would include stories about their trips to buy items that were once part of her late husband’s collection of antiques, vintage toys and cars, auctioned in 1992 to help pay taxes and settle his estate.

Denice Shakarian Halicki, 39, was in the news in 1994 as the fiance of O.J. Simpson confidant Robert Kardashian.

Toby Halicki died when a cable that was attached to a water tower snapped and severed a telephone pole, which fell on him. He was also known for his movies “The Junkman” and “Deadline Auto Thief.”

Weesie Daniel of the Prudential-Jon Douglas Co.’s Palos Verdes Malaga Cove office has the listing.

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A Wilshire Boulevard townhouse that was custom built in the 1980s for singer Michael Jackson’s youngest brother, Randy, and is said to have been leased at one time by Cher has come on the market at $925,000.

The 3,000-square-foot unit has four terraces, views from Century City to the ocean and a second bedroom that doubles as a screening room. The building has a pool and a gym.

Actress Dyan Cannon was leasing a 3,600-square-foot condo in the same building until that unit was purchased in March for $970,000 by a daughter of the chairman of a New York-based Fortune 500 company, sources say.

Sue Ann Simon and Ernest Carswell of the Prudential-Jon Douglas Co., Beverly Hills, share the listing. The seller was described as a real estate developer who is moving to his yacht.