Pumping Up the Compound
While other husbands were buying roses for their wives on Valentine’s Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger was buying his wife, Maria Shriver, a neighbor’s home to add to their Pacific Palisades compound. Escrow on the $3.2-million home closed Feb. 14.
This marks the third time in eight years that the Schwarzeneggers have bought a neighboring property. The couple’s compound now totals about 5.5 acres.
Their latest purchase was a home of Jay and Sherry Lustig. Jay Lustig, a developer, is part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team.
The Lustigs were spending more time in Pittsburgh and decided to sell their Palisades home of eight years. The five-bedroom house is on nearly 1.5 acres.
Schwarzenegger and Shriver, who have four children, bought their first house in the neighborhood in 1986, the year they were married. They didn’t add on to their property with its seven-bedroom, 6,500-square-foot house, until 1993, when they bought the four-bedroom, 6,000-square-foot home of actor John Forsythe. The Forsythe property, which they reportedly have used for offices and as a guest suite, borders their original home to the north and has a tennis court.
In 1995, Schwarzenegger and Shriver bought the four-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot home of “Hill Street Blues” star Daniel J. Travanti. That home borders their original home to the south. The Lustigs’ home was on the other side of Travanti’s. All of the houses were built in the early ‘80s.
Arnold Schwarzenegger most recently starred in “The 6th Day” (2000). The actor, 53, also has a leading role in the movie “Collateral Damage,” due out in August, and he will star in “Terminator 3,” to be released in 2002.
Schwarzenegger was paid $25 million for his starring role in the movie “End of Days” (1999), and he earned the same for playing Mr. Freeze in the film “Batman and Robin” (1997), according to published reports.
Shriver, an NBC-TV reporter and author of such books as “Ten Things I Wish I Had Known Before I Went Out Into the Real World,” has been a contributing anchor to “Dateline NBC.”
She also has been developing a film project with producer-director Ivan Reitman about a Republican who marries into a family of Democrats, a story that parallels her own. Shriver, 45, is a member of the Kennedy family. Schwarzenegger, an active Republican, has been discussed as a candidate for governor of California.
*
Peter Sperling, son of the founder of the Arizona-based University of Phoenix, has purchased a three-acre oceanfront site in Montecito for $17 million.
The site, which had been on the market at $18 million, has a guest house but no main residence. The main house was torn down. The sale included house plans.
Sperling, 40, already owns a 12-acre Montecito estate, which he bought from actress Geena Davis and her ex-husband, director Renny Harlin, in 1997 for about $9.5 million. Davis and Harlin had purchased the home about 10 months after they were married in 1993. That property includes a 20-room, 9,000-square-foot main residence, a guest house, a staff cottage, a tennis court and a pool.
However, the home is not on the ocean, where Sperling is expected to build.
Shortly before buying the home from Davis and Harlin, Sperling bought another inland Montecito house for about $3 million. He reportedly gave the 3.5-acre property, owned once by actress Jane Seymour, to his father, John Sperling, who lives primarily in a Tuscan-style Phoenix home.
The elder Sperling, 79, created the University of Phoenix as a for-profit school open only to jobholders aged 23 and up. It won accreditation in 1981 and by 1997, its enrollment topped that of New York University.
The Sperlings each own a stake of the Apollo Group, the University of Phoenix’s holdings company, said to be worth about $300 million.
*
Australian singer-songwriter Kylie Minogue, who will compete against Madonna and Britney Spears in the best international female category of the Brits music awards in London on Monday, is selling her West Hollywood home for about its $1.3-million asking price. Escrow is due to close on Tuesday.
Minogue listed the French Normandy-style house, with four bedrooms in slightly more than 3,000 square feet, in November. She purchased the home, with two fireplaces and a pool, last year. She hasn’t had much time to use it and decided to put it on the market.
Since becoming a teen idol in the ‘80s, Minogue, 32, has sold more than 30 million records. She made her recording debut after starring in the Australian soap “Neighbours.” She recently expressed an interest in appearing in the London soap “EastEnders.”
Victor Kaminoff, director of architectural and unique properties for Coldwell Banker, Sunset Strip, had the listing with David Gordon of the same office.
*
Tony Krantz, co-chairman and chief executive of Imagine Television, has sold his 8.5-acre home site in the Beverly Hills area for $3 million.
The land was listed at $4.75 million when it first went on the market last March.
The buyers are Jordin Mendelsohn, a partner and executive creative director of Mendelsohn/Zien Advertising, and his wife, Michelle. Mendelsohn/Zien has had an ongoing ad campaign for Carl’s Jr. which carries the tagline “If it doesn’t get all over the place, it doesn’t belong in your face.”
Krantz, son of novelist Judith Krantz, had planned to build a house on the park-like site on a promontory with city views, but his career as a production executive overseeing such TV shows as “The PJs,” “Sports Night” and “Felicity” has kept him too busy.
The property has city-approved plans for a main house, three auxiliary buildings and a pool. The site was sold to Krantz for $3.7 million in 1998 by singer-songwriter Don Henley, the Eagles drummer who went on to become a solo artist and concert organizer.
Henley had owned the property since 1976. He had it on the market at $10 million before his two-bedroom, 2,500-square-foot house there was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The house was torn down before Krantz bought the property.
*
Engelbert Humperdinck’s Holmby Hills house, formerly owned by the late Jayne Mansfield and built in 1935 by Rudy Vallee, has come back on the market, this time at $4.75 million. The home, on 1.5 acres just off Sunset Boulevard, was taken off the market last year. Known as the Pink Palace, it was listed in September 1999 in the $5-million range.
Now that it’s back on the market, all 10 acres of the properties on the cul-de-sac with the Humperdinck house are available again. The two adjacent properties, bordering the L.A. Country Club, are still listed at $58.9 million. One, “Owlwood,” belonged to Esther Williams; the other was once owned by Tony Curtis, then Sonny and Cher.
Drew Mandile and Brooke Knapp of Sotheby’s, Beverly Hills, have the listings.
*
Did you miss Thursday’s Hot Property column in Southern California Living? Want to see previous columns on celebrity real estate transactions? Visit https://www.latimes.com/hotproperty on the Internet for more Hot Properties.
*
* INSIDE
Kylie Minogue, Engelbert Humperdinck
