This Is His, Not Momma’s, House
Actor-comedian Martin Lawrence has closed escrow on a Beverly Hills-area home for $12.5 million. The asking price was $13.25 million.
Lawrence, 35, played an FBI agent going undercover in “Big Momma’s House,” in which he also impersonated the 300-pound title character. Lawrence was also executive producer of the movie, which took in more than $25 million at the box office its first week in June.
He co-stars this year with Danny DeVito in “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” The movie is due this summer.
Lawrence bought a nearly 14,000-square-foot house on 2.8 acres in a gated community. He plans to refurbish and expand the six-bedroom, 10-bath home, built in 1991.
He wants to convert a triangular-shaped patio into a game room with a billiard table and turn a gym into a movie theater seating 12 to 20 viewers on three levels, with a glass-encased snack area in the rear.
The home has two garages, one for three cars, the other for four. The three-car garage is expected to be turned into a gym. There is a large courtyard for additional parking.
Dugally-Oberfeld, headed by Chairman Aleck Dugally, will do the renovations; Maurice Umansky of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills had the listing, and Nick Segal of DBL Realtors, Sunset office, represented Lawrence, other sources said.
Mike Medavoy, chairman of Phoenix Pictures and a producer of the upcoming movies “Shanghai” and “Basic,” and his wife, Irena, have moved into their newly built 14,000-square-foot, East Coast-traditional style home on 2.5 acres in the Beverly Hills area, sources said.
The house, valued at an estimated $14 million, took two years to build. Finishing touches will take six months.
Even so, the house, in a gated community, was ready for Vanity Fair’s Golden Globes party, which was scheduled to be held Friday, and it will be ready for the Feb. 10 Valentine Ball, for Coach for Kids, a mobile medical clinic staffed by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Irena Medavoy is executive vice chairman of the charity.
Mike Medavoy has produced a number of Oscar-winning films and was chairman of TriStar Pictures before forming Phoenix Pictures in 1995. The first Phoenix Pictures movies, “The People vs. Larry Flynt” and “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” were released in 1996. He also produced “The Sixth Day” (2000) and “The Thin Red Line” (1998).
“Basic,” a thriller about a Louisiana basic-training camp, is due to start filming in March. “Shanghai,” a period romance-thriller about an American spy in 1941 Shanghai, China, is in development.
The Medavoys’ new home has four bedrooms plus a staff suite and a separate guest house. The home also has a living room-screening room, a 1,000-bottle wine cellar, fireplaces in nearly every room, a library-dining room, a large playroom and four kitchens, including one outside and one in the guest house.
The home also has heated verandas, a pool house, a pool and an acre of gardens and lawns, with landscaping designed by Katherine Spitz.
Built by Matt Plaskoff Construction and designed by architect Steve Bardwell, the home has a stone and white clapboard exterior with a slate roof and black shutters.
Computer software king Peter Norton and his wife, Eileen, have put a ranch house that they own in Brentwood on the market at $715,000.
Built in 1941, the ranch house, in Sullivan Canyon, was used for years before the Nortons bought it as the office of the late Cliff May, father of the California ranch-style house. May, who designed the house, died in 1989 at 81.
The Nortons, who bought the house from May’s estate around 1992, haven’t been using it much lately and decided to sell. The couple, who live in Santa Monica, had used the Sullivan Canyon house when going horseback riding.
The house has two bedrooms, a den and 1.5 baths in about 1,100 square feet plus horse facilities, including three horse stalls and a tack room. The property, about a third of an acre, also has sycamore and oak trees.
Norton, 57, created Unerase, which allowed personal computer users to retrieve lost data, and the Norton Utilities program, used to solve a wide range of PC problems.
Since he sold his Peter Norton Computing Inc. to the Symantec Corp. for $70 million in 1990, the Nortons have been known for their philanthropic work and contemporary art collection.
Linda Janger of Pace Properties, Beverly Hills, has the listing.
A Bel-Air home on about 61 acres has come on the market at $15 million.
Owned for about 30 years by an international businessman, the property, overlooking the Getty Museum, includes a 6,500-square-foot home with a two-story guest house.
Built in 1956 but rebuilt recently, the home also has a pool, spa, auto court and long, gated drive. The site has views from downtown L.A. to the ocean.
Marilyn Watson of Celebrity Properties/Coldwell Banker, Beverly Hills, and Greg Pawlik of Coldwell Banker, Pacific Palisades, share the listing.
A Catalina Island house designed by the late architect Rudolph Schindler and built in 1928 has been sold for close to its $1.6-million asking price.
Known as the Madame Wolfe House, for its first owner--clothing designer C.H. Wolfe--the house, in the city of Avalon, was sold by attorney-skier-yachtsman Tiberio Lizza.
Lizza, who had owned the property since the mid-’70s, was reluctant to sell the home but had little time to go to Catalina. He also has homes in Tiburon, Mammoth Lakes, Sun Valley and Long Beach.
The buyer is developer Richard Flock of Laguna Beach and Casa Grande, Ariz. Flock said that he hopes to restore the three-bedroom, 3,500-square-foot house. He has Schindler’s original plans for the house, furniture and landscaping.
Schindler, who worked with architect Frank Lloyd Wright before venturing out on his own and designing more than 500 houses in the Southland, died in 1953. The Museum of Contemporary Art plans to hold an exhibit of Schindler’s work from Feb. 25 through June 3 at California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles.
Sharon Tyree of Coldwell Banker Previews, Arcadia and Huntingon Beach, handled both sides of the Catalina transaction.
Mehetia, a 250-acre island 90 miles east of Tahiti, has been put on the market at $3 million. The uninhabited, French Polynesian island, which has spring water and coconut trees, is being sold by a Tahitian family.
Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson & Associates has the listing.
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Inside: Mike Medavoy and Peter Norton
