‘Jeopardy’ Host Buys Mountain
Game-show host ALEX TREBEK has purchased a mountain in the Hollywood Hills where he plans to build a dream home for his bride and himself.
“I don’t know yet what style house I will build,” CBS-TV’s “Jeopardy” star said. “We both like modern architecture and French chateaus, so who knows? But it will be a collaborative effort with my fiancee, Jean Currivan . . . and it will be a monster.”
He paid $1.5 million for more than 35 acres just north of the Sunset Strip, including 21 lots that he plans to sell for from $100,000 to $480,000 each.
“He got a steal,” said Dan Kristo of Realty People Inc., who represented Trebek in the acquisition and has the listings.
“It will still cost a lot to develop,” Trebek said, “but maybe I got a good deal, because the owner had a special place in his heart for the property. He wanted to build a home there for himself and his wife but didn’t, so now he’d like to see another young couple build (on the site).”
The seller was Paul Sutro. “He did a lot of land development in the Hollywood Hills and downtown with his brothers during the ‘40s and ‘50s,” Trebek said.
“This was one of the (Sutro) family’s last large holdings,” Kristo added. “Alex will resell the lots, which rim the bottom of the property, and he’ll still have 35 acres for his own estate. The drive to his front door will be almost a mile long.”
“We’ll have to cut off the top of the mountain to make a pad, but that’s the kind of thing I enjoy doing,” Trebek said. “I built my chalet in Canada and renovated three or four houses, so I can do a lot of the work myself, but we’ll have to wait until after the rainy season to start grading. We’ll probably start about the time we get married.”
He and Currivan expect to get married in April. “We’re supposed to get married then,” he said, “but we’re both so busy, we may have to wait until fall.” Currivan works for a company that develops shopping plazas and hotels.
They will live, he said, in his present home on Mulholland Drive until their new home is completed.
Actor KIRK CAMERON is settling into his first house.
The 19-year-old, who plays Mike Seaver on ABC-TV’s “Growing Pains,” paid $500,000 for the two-bedroom, two-bath house on a hill in the suburbs of Simi Valley, near his family’s home in West Hills.
The trilevel house, on more than an acre, was built by the former owner and has no interior doors, a spokesman for Mike Glickman Realty said. The home also has a guest house and a garage with a bedroom and an exercise room.
Laverne Ferraro of Glickman’s Encino office handled the sale.
Ex-heavyweight champ MIKE TYSON and Tyson’s promoter DON KING have put a Wilshire Corridor condo they have jointly owned for a couple of years on the market at $660,000, including furnishings.
“There are no punching bags in the townhouse,” said Kathy Villa, who has the listing at Asher Dann & Associates, “but the building has a gym, swimming pool and tennis court.”
The 2,100-square-foot unit, on the third floor of a high-rise, has two bedrooms and a den, all filled with what Villa termed “very oversized furniture.” Neither King nor Tyson owns any other homes in the Los Angeles area at this time, she added.
A lake-front home in Toluca Lake, owned for four decades by the ROY DISNEY family, has been sold for $3.75 million, a record price for the area, sources say.
Roy Disney Sr., brother of entertainment mogul Walt Disney, lived in the house for years before his son, Roy Disney Jr., took occupancy. The family sold the property in the late ‘70s.
The Art Deco, 8,000-square-foot mansion has a disco, projection room, glass-walled music conservatory, gym, two boat docks and 18-foot-tall, bronze front doors with wrought-iron gates.
“From the street, people see it and say ‘Who lives there?’ ” an industry source observed. Ron Howard, Bob Hope, Rick Dees and Henry Winkler are some of the celebs who live in the neighborhood.
The new owner was identified as Hal Lederman, a commercial real estate investor who heads the large new cosmetic company that just introduced actor George Hamilton’s Skincare System. The sellers, three investors, bought the property about a year ago from Joe Payne, a Texas industrialist involved in oil and real estate, and his wife, Dorothy.
Dorothy Payne lived there by herself for several years, and she was responsible, sources say, for turning the Monterey Colonial-style house into a home with an Art Deco museum-quality look. The investors, two brothers and a sister headed by designer Richard Helfrich, completed the job.
Realtors involved in the deal wouldn’t comment, but they are Andrew Manning of Fred Sands Realtors, who represented the buyer, and Margie Oswald and Vida Monify of Rodeo Realty, who represented the sellers.
HARVEY and MARILYN DIAMOND, authors of the best-selling “Fit for Life” diet book, are planning to move from the five-bedroom, five-bath home they built three years ago in Calabasas.
They’ve put the Tudor-style house on the market at $2.1 million and are negotiating to buy in Ojai.
“The Diamonds really practice what they preach,” said Brian Panella, who listed the authors’ house through Jon Douglas Co.’s Malibu offices. “They planted thousands of dollars worth of fruit trees, raspberries, strawberries and blackberries that they use in their everyday diet.”
The Diamonds’ 6-acre site consists of three contiguous parcels, including the one with the 7,000-square-foot house.
Gary L. Wilson, former chief financial officer of Walt Disney Co. who is now a company director and consultant, is said to be buying the Holmby Hills mansion known as the GOETZ ESTATE from the family of the late Edie Goetz, daughter of movie mogul Louis B. Mayer.
The 17,000-square-foot Georgian-style mansion, built in 1934, fell out of a 5-month-long escrow late last fall. Christopher Skase, head of Qintex Australia Ltd., dropped plans then to buy it, reportedly for a bit more than $8 million, after his company failed to acquire MGM/UA film studios.
The 2-acre property was first listed last spring at $12 million. Real estate sources say Wilson is paying about $7.4 million.
An 8,100-square-foot country English estate, owned by late producer GARY HENDLER, has been sold in probate court for more than its $3.75-million asking price.
Shopping center developer Elliot Megdal and his wife, Alana, paid $4 million for the 1 3/4-acre, 52-year-old home in the Beverly Hills Post Office Area. The buyers were represented by Judi Schryro of Alvarez, Hyland & Young.
