He Gets a Kick Out of Views
Frank Sinatra Jr. has purchased a home in the Beverly Hills area for about $3.5 million.
A conductor, arranger, pianist and vocalist, Sinatra, 54, performed this weekend at the Beverly Hilton with his 20-piece band. Several of its members toured for years with his father, who died in May.
In the late 1980s, the younger Sinatra took over as musical director and concert conductor for his father’s tours.
Sinatra Jr., who grew up in L.A., has maintained a Beverly Hills-area home for years, but after he married for the first time in October, he and his wife wanted more of a family home here. They also plan to spend time at her home near Houston.
Sinatra’s wife, Cynthia McMurrey, is a lawyer. When in L.A., they stay in his bachelor pad while redecorating the just-purchased home.
Built in 1980, the home has seven bedrooms in about 8,200 square feet on nearly four acres with city and ocean views. The gated estate also has a gatehouse with two guest suites, two spas, a pool and a lighted tennis court.
Michele Martin of DBL Realtors, Beverly Hills, represented Sinatra in his purchase.
Mike Medavoy, chairman of Phoenix Pictures and producer of “The Thin Red Line,” and his wife, Irena, have purchased a two-acre parcel in Beverly Park, overlooking Beverly Hills, for $2.4 million.
They plan to build an 11,000-square-foot home there.
Irena Medavoy is vice chairman of Coach for Kids, a mobile medical clinic staffed by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which will hold a fashion show on Monday at the Pacific Palisades home of former boxer Sugar Ray Leonard and his wife, Bernadette.
Mike Medavoy, 57, has produced a number of Oscar-winning films and has six movies coming out this year.
The East Coast traditional-style home that the Medavoys plan to build will have a living room-screening room, “so it will have a dual function,” she said, “and we’ll have a tennis court, because Mike is such a fanatic.”
The home also will have a guest house with a kitchen. The Medavoys expect to break ground in March.
They had planned to build a home in Pacific Palisades, but they are selling a property there that they have owned since 1997. “We had plans to tear down the house there and build, but after our son was born [last January], we fell in love with Beverly Park,” she said.
Children’s parties in a four-acre park within the gated community drew her there, and then friends who were homeowners encouraged the Medavoys to buy and build. “What is more wonderful than knowing your neighbors?” she asked. The couple currently leases in Beverly Hills.
Barbara Robinson of DBL Realtors, Beverly Hills, had the Beverly Park listing.
Producer Mario Kassar, who resigned as chairman of Carolco in 1995 when the company filed for bankruptcy protection, has listed his Holmby Hills home at $7.5 million.
Kassar formed MK Productions after he left Carolco. Then, last year, he reteamed with his co-founding Carolco partner, Andrew Vajna, who left Carolco in 1989. Kassar, 47, produced the 1991 movies “Total Recall” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”
The house, which Kassar has owned for about a dozen years, was owned at one time by TV reporter Rona Barrett and later by Interscope Films executive Ted Field.
Situated on slightly more than two acres, the compound includes a main house with a projection room, two guest houses, a racquetball court, tennis court and pool. The gated estate also has a long private drive.
June Scott of June Scott Estates, a Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co. agency in Beverly Hills, has the listing.
A Beverly Hills-area home owned by singer Rita Coolidge from the mid-1970s until 1996 has been sold for nearly its $1.4-million asking price to Los Angeles Realtor John Aaroe.
Last month, Aaroe and his business partner, Alan Field, sold ownership control of John Aaroe & Associates, the third-largest real estate firm in Los Angeles, to a California Prudential Realty franchisee. Aaroe and Field remain in charge of Prudential John Aaroe Associates as managing partners.
The three-bedroom house, which has a separate maid’s room-office, was owned by designers Brandon Hoskins and Steve Wilson. They bought it from Coolidge for $675,000, restored it and then put it back on the market. The house, built in 1958, has vaulted ceilings, a balcony and a pool.
Richard Klug of Sotheby’s International Realty, Beverly Hills, had the listing.
The Berkeley home where veteran Los Angeles TV-radio reporter Warren Olney IV, host of the KCRW-FM radio show “Which Way, L.A.?,” grew up has been sold for the first time in 60 years.
“It was my father’s house,” Olney said of the Berkeley property. His father was an assistant U.S. attorney general. The reporter’s grandfather was on the state Supreme Court. His great-grandfather was a soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War and then became mayor of Oakland.
The Olneys bought the Berkeley house a few years after it was built in 1932. The new owners are Bruce Clymer, president-owner of Thompson-Brooks Inc., a restoration-refurbishing company, and his wife, Cindi. They bought the house for $920,000; the asking price was $850,000.
“It’s sad for our family to let it go,” Olney said. The 4,000-square-foot house has a 20- by-35-foot living room with French doors leading to a porch with San Francisco Bay views. The home also has a library that was part of an addition including a master suite and a sun deck.
Julie Nachtwey of Prudential California Realty in Berkeley had the listing.
